The Betty Black Blog

Happy Heroes’ Day!

On Monday 19^th October Jamaica celebrates National Heroes’ Day. Our seven National Heroes all contributed towards making Jamaica free. The eighteenth and nineteenth century ones freed us from the curse of slavery and the twentieth century ones spear-headed the Labour Movement and Jamaica’s Independence.

There are many, many other people who have contributed greatly to making our Homeland what it is today; some have had volumes written about them while others have barely a line in the annals of History. I have set myself the ambitious task of selecting only seven of these individuals to write about and have laid down only two criteria: 1.They must have done something a) to improve the lives of Jamaicans or b) improved the name of Jamaica internationally. 2) That they not be freedom fighters or politicians as all of our official heroes fall into one or both of those categories.

Chris Blackwell

In 1964 My Boy Lollipop by Millie Small hit #2 on the British Charts, this was the first time that a Jamaican song had made the Top Ten outside of Jamaica. In 1972 The Harder They Come with Jimmy Cliff hit the big screen. In 1973 Bob Marley and the Wailers, after eight years of popularity at home, hit the world by storm and music was never the same. Then there’s Burning Spear, Third World, Grace Jones. All of these were produced by Chris Blackwell. Not just Jamaican Music either, but Cat Stevens, Melissa Etheridge, The Cranberries and should you admire the boundless philanthropy of the hard working Bono; well, U2 is also produced by Blackwell. Outside of music, Blackwell is CEO of Island Outpost, which owns and operates several unique resorts in Jamaica and the Caribbean including Goldeneye, where Ian Fleming wrote the James Bond novels. Not forgetting his roots, Blackwell has been a philanthropist in his home parish of St Mary.

Edna Manley

Wife of a National Hero and mother of Jamaica’s most controversial Prime Minister, Edna Manley was so much more.  Edna Swithenbank attended art school in England and, in the early 1920s, started to produce cubist sculpture. She returned to Jamaica upon marrying Norman Manley and, while her husband shaped Jamaica’s political future, Edna shaped our art. Her cubist work became more rounded as her own style developed. In 1935 her great work Negro Aroused, inspired by the Labour Movement, shocked Jamaica and the world. Along the way she taught and mentored local artists and in 1950 co-founded the Jamaica School of Art. In 1965 she created the statue of Paul Bogle which stands in front of the Morant Bay Courthouse, the very first statue of a Black man erected in Jamaica. In 1976 the Jamaica School of Art merged with the School of Dance and the School of Music and was renamed the Cultural Training Centre. In 1995, eight years after Edna Manley’s death, the Cultural Training Centre was renamed the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. The National Gallery contains a permanent exhibit of her work.

Rex Nettleford

Prof. the Hon. Rex Nettleford is a man with a brilliant mind. He studied Political Science at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship and has written numerous works on politics and culture and won many honours and awards. In fact in 2003 the Rhodes Trust established the Rex Nettleford Fellowship to mark the Centenary of the Scholarship in the Caribbean. However, his mind is not the reason I included him on this list. In 1962 Nettleford founded the National Dance Theatre Company and brought his own unique style of dance to the world. A mix of ballet, modern and West African dance all seamlessly combined into the perfect Jamaican Dance. For many years, in addition to his cerebral pursuits, he served as choreographer and principal dancer of the NDTC, at home and on tour across Europe and the Americas. Even now, well into his seventies, he still choreographs at least one dance each season.

Keble Munn

A scion of the Jamaican plantocracy, Keeble Munn was also a politician. But his life’s work was not politics but rather in regularising Jamaica’s most famous agricultural product, our fine Blue Mountain Coffee. An accident of birth caused him to come into this world on a two century old coffee plantation in the foothills of the Blue Mountains but he was not satisfied with enjoying his legacy. In 1950 he founded the Coffee Industry Board and set out to craft the stringent rules and regulations which guarantee that each and every berry, no matter which plantation it comes from, has exactly the same perfection when brewed into a cup of coffee. The specific rules which govern area, altitude, reaping time, colour and a host of other criteria were crafted by this dedicated man. His historic family plantation is now the Mavis Bank Coffee Factory.

Eugene Desnoes and Thomas Geddes

On the 31^st of July 1918 Desnoes and Geddes was incorporated in Jamaica and acquired the businesses formerly operated by Eugene Peter Desnoes and Thomas Hargreaves Geddes. They went on to formulate and brew Red Stripe Beer. Need I say more?

Richard Ho-Lung

Who could have imagined when the soft spoken man was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1971 that he would make such an impact, not just on Jamaica’s Roman Catholic Community, but on the entire Island. Somewhere along the way he thought he could encourage more people into churches if there was something livelier to sing than the staid European hymns. This man, who had never written a word of poetry nor a note of music, started to create upbeat hymns, most with a reggae beat and some in the vernacular patois. This led to an annual Musical, number twenty-eight of which, Jam Reggae Opera, is currently on stage. As if his plate was not full, in 1985 Fr. Ho-Lung founded the Missionaries of the Poor. At first a few priests wandering Kingston’s inner city feeding the poor; now a large Order, recognised by the Vatican, housing the poorest of the poor, AIDS patients, unwanted babies, lepers; in India, the Philippines, Haiti, Uganda, Kenya and North America as well as in Jamaica.

Lenworth and Beth Jacobs

I can find almost nothing about these pioneers of Family Planning in Jamaica. Dr Lenworth Jacobs and his social worker wife, Beth, were the founders of Jamaica’s first organised family planning service in the mid 1950s. One can imagine that advocating birth control at that time was not very popular and they faced great opposition from both “polite society” and scores of “baby-fathers.” Today the average Jamaican woman has 2.3 children, much easier to care for properly than the 5.7 of the late 1950s and early 1960s. We are left with scores of family planning clinics called the Lenworth Jacobs Clinic or the Beth Jacobs Clinic but very little written word about this dedicated couple.

I promised only seven to match the number of National Heroes. Without even thinking I had listed twenty three names. I then began the task of whittling the number down to seven. I first crossed off those that I’ve already written about: Mary Seacole, T.P. Lecky and Jacob Decordova. Two more were crossed of as I had promised no political figures. Then there were those I could find very little on, like Mr Swaby(?) Who developed the ortanique. I then went on to the more popular names; most people already know a lot about Bob Marley and the other reggae greats as well as our great sports figures. Of those that were left, I eventually brought the list down to the seven who I think best fit my criteria.

Any other nominations?

Read more about Jamaica at my website Jamaica-Allspice.