Miss Lou honoured with Google Doodle

Jamaican poet, folklorist and educator Louise 'Miss Lou' Bennett-Coverley is being honoured today in select regions with a dedicated Google Doodle on what would have been her 103rd birthday.

Google Doodle is a tool on the company's homepage that is used to highlight world issues, historic events, and celebrations around the globe. The homepage for Google Search is one of the most-viewed web pages on the planet.

Born on September 7, 1919, Miss Lou is most revered for the part she played in driving home acceptance of the spoken dialect in Jamaica and for its use as a language in its own right.

Raised by her mother after the death of her father in 1926, she attended Ebenezer and Calabar elementary schools, before enrolling in St Simon's College and Excelsior College, in Kingston.

Growing up, she always had an irrepressible sense of humour and a flair for dramatics.

The young Louise wrote her first dialect poem at the age of 14. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, she was regarded as an embarrassment as speaking dialect was felt to be socially unacceptable, and only the poor and illiterate spoke patois. 

Miss Lou had a regular Sunday column in The Gleaner, for which she was paid 10 shillings and six pence ($1.05). 

In 1945, Bennett became the first black student to study at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art after winning a scholarship from the British Council.

On her return to Jamaica, Miss Lou secured work with the Jamaica Social Welfare Commission where she was employed from 1955 to 1959, and taught folklore and drama at the University of the West Indies.

Her performances in local theatre became legendary. Miss Lou became known as Jamaica's leading comedienne, and used her poems in Jamaican patois, to raise Jamaican folk art and expression to a level adored by many.

Between 1965 and 1982, Bennett introduced 'Miss Lou's Views', a radio monologue, and in 1970 started hosting 'Ring Ding', a children's television programme.

Miss Lou was the recipient of a number of significant national, regional and international honours and awards. These include the Silver (1965) and Gold (1979) Musgrave Medals; the Order of Jamaica (1974) and the Centenary medal of the Institute of Jamaica (1980).

Miss Lou was made a Member of the British Empire (MBE) for work in Jamaican literature and theatre in 1960.

On Independence Day 2001, she was appointed as a member of the Order of Merit.

Miss Lou lived her last years in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada. She died on July 27, 2006. 

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