The Voice Of The Jamaican Ghetto: Incarcerated but not Silenced

by Adidja Palmer

hated black people so much that their hatred influenced the rules that black people had to live by. They banned gatherings and any talk of Black Power. Yes, you could not even have any books in your possession about Black Power, Malcolm X or any black freedom fighter in Jamaica. Sounds like elements of Apartheid but it was our black Prime Minister that did it and not a white regime. Not only did Hugh Shearer ban those books, but he also prevented the great author and lecturer Sir Walter Rodney from landing in Jamaica. Yes, the same Walter Rodney who wrote books like; ‘Grounding with my Brothers’, and ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’. The ban was also carried out in High Schools and students could not wear pins indicating their support for the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) or any other similar black group. Black people got in trouble in schools in Jamaica for loving the Black Child. Things got so bad in response to Shearer’s and the government’s treatment of Walter Rodney that there were riots; properties destroyed, buses destroyed and strikes everywhere. A declassified US telegram that was reporting to Washington on the