The Tribune

The passing of Dr Gail North-Saunders has been keenly felt in The Bahamas. One of our nation’s foremost historians, the news comes at a time when The Bahamas is celebrating a historic moment. Hers is a voice that has helped us understand where we have come from and, in so doing, better navigate where we are going. Fifty years ago, as The Bahamas was being born anew, her voice was guiding us then too. In the Independence supplement to mark that occasion, she wrote about the path from emancipation to Independence.

One note we should make - language and its use have changed over the years, particularly with regard to race. We reprint her article here, as it was then, without alteration, and readers should note that it is in the wording from 50 years ago, from an important moment in our history.

By D. Gail Saunders

BY an Act of Parliament in 1834, slaves were declared apprentices, slave owners were compensated and provisions were made to transform a Slave Society as smoothly as possible into a free community. Freedom was not complete; the former slaves still had to work for their former masters and personal freedom was limited; former slaves could still be punished (indeed the whip was occasionally used), and were not allowed to sit on a jury or hold any office except very minor posts.

It was the Emancipation Act of 1838 which was to come into effect on August 1 of that year, which gave the former slaves full freedom. The apprentices were “released and discharged of and from the then remaining and unexplained term of their apprenticeship and (to) be forever after freed from all and every duties, obligations and services of the said Act of Parliament (1834) and the Act of the General Assembly imposed upon them and from all pains and penalties … (2 Vic 1 Cpt.1)

PASSED QUIETLY

Emancipation day passed quietly; no riots, bloodshed or disorder. No great rejoicings took place and even at Nassau, although Emancipation Day was “hailed with joy” by the Apprentices, there was “no noise or tumult”. Instead all places of worship were unusually packed with the liberated class and “singing was unusually lively”, so reports a Methodist Missionary.

This very orderly transition out of legal slavery foreshadowed the slowness of change to come.

Theoretically the former slaves were free men; they enjoyed freedom of punishments, freedom to leave the abodes and plantations of their former masters and cultivate their own land; freedom to choose the type of work they wished.

In short they could exercise freedom in their own interest. However, it was a formal type of freedom and for a long time although legally the whole basis of Society was changed by the 1838 Act, real change was to be very slow.

In fact the Act did not alter immediately the structure of the Society as there still existed ruler and ruled, white and black, landowners and labourer. Politically, socially and economically the former slaves were still at a great disadvantage and only time would change their position. The former slaves had little political rights or social and economic opportunities and therefore continued “to be the nearly passive instruments of economic exploitation by their former masters” (W. K. Marshall).

GENERAL POVERTY

Positively speaking the former slaves and apprentices had freedom of movement. They could choose their own work and leave their former masters and employers. However, this was not in the majority of cases practical.

The Bahamas at Emancipation was in an advanced state of economic decay. There was general poverty and insecurity, even for many former slave owners. The cotton plantations because of the chenille bug and poor soil had for the most part collapsed; salt, another staple, was declining, and wrecking, which was practised was to be stopped by the construction of lighthouses in the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s.

There was little or no paid employment and many of the former slaves took to subsistence farming where land was available.

Unfortunately land tenure was very confused. Many owners did allocate land to their former slaves but a large area of land had poor or worked-out soil and much of the land had unsure title.

The system of quit-rent tenure (land leased from the Crown) did not succeed as rents were often not paid and land reverted to the Crown.

NO GUIDANCE

Freed negroes were not given much instructions and guidance in their new status and had little idea of the most modern methods of farming. Most people on the Out Islands lived slightly above starvation level and hardly yielded enough crops for export.

Among the few exceptions to the land problem as the Sandilands Estate in eastern New Providence which was divided up in 1849 and allotments sold to the residents of the settlements. In Exuma Lord John Rolle deeded his extensive lands to his slaves and their descendants in Commonage.

On the whole, however, because of insurmountable economic difficulties, the Bahamas’s former slaves were thwarted in their struggle to build up their own farms while a peasant economy was being enjoyed in the sugar islands in the South. The former slaves untrained in any skill for the most part, remained poor and the power structure basically the same.

Power was founded on ownership and therefore the negroes remained almost as subordinate to their masters as when they were slaves and apprentices.

STATUS AND POWER

It must be said that many of the former masters were also poor. Little money was available. However they had social status and political power. The former slaves had neither.

Economically the blacks were dependent; in the 1880s they were still very much bound to the Nassau merchants (who were mainly white) by the often iniquitous “Truck System” where the black people were hired out and paid in kind instead of cash.

Little attention was paid to the development of social services. Popular education which should have been given top priority, received scant attention. Private schools existed for the elite and although the Board of Education was established in 1835, it only provided for primary education.

Moreover, schools were not numerous enough to accommodate the Bahamian population and many children never attended school. The public schools were to suffer for many years to come from the lack of qualified teachers, inadequate buildings, poverty and an apathetic attitude by the Government.

Health and welfare services hardly fared better and the legacy of this neglect is still being felt today.

MORE DISCRIMINATION

It seemed that prejudice was accentuated and discrimination increased. The former slave now nominally free was more of a threat to his former master. The white minority still dominated in all spheres of life and the negro remained in “social limbo”.

One historian goes so far as to say “Indeed, emancipation increased racial prejudice; with slavery gone, colour criteria took on greater importance in West Indian Society, not less.” – (D Lowenthal).

The distance between white, brown and black widened as social integration had different meanings for the three groups. The coloured wanted acceptance by whites, the blacks wanted self esteem and a share of the material and social benefits and the whites wanted the blacks and coloured to remain docile and passive and retain the status quo.

In the 1940s whites still dominated all Caribbean governments; in the Bahamas this was still true until 1967. In 1887 Magistrate Powles caused an uproar and near riot when he sentenced a white man to a month in jail. Two years previously, five black men were fined at Harbour Island for entering the Methodist Church by the door reserved for whites.

ANTI-DISCRIMINATION

Sir Etienne Dupuch’s 1956 Resolution in the House of Assembly against discrimination illustrates that racial discrimination was very real and that Emancipation had been but a small step in bridging the social and racial bridge in Bahamian Society.

Political freedom for the former slaves was a myth. The white man retained his former power controlling the local legislature which gradually gained strength during the nineteenth century.

A few rich, educated or more influential men of colour were elected quite early into the Bahamian House of Assembly. In fact by 1834, four men of colour sat in the Lower House.

However, power was founded on land ownership and a narrow elective franchise.

The Bahamas fared better than many West Indian islands franchise-wise. In 1864, 5,949 registered voters out of a population of 35,287 voted in the Bahamas, while in Jamaica, in the previous year, 1,482 voted out of a population of 540,000. However there is no way of knowing the proportion of whites to blacks in the electorate.

The lack of property and high property qualifications kept a vast majority of the freed slaves from voting, let alone holding office. The ballot was a special privilege. Those who voted were often intimidated by the rich and influential and the secret ballot was not introduced into New Providence until 1940 and extended to the Out Islands the next year. It was not until after the General Strike of 1958 (a rumbling of the events to come in the 1960s) that property qualification and plural voting were abolished.

It was no coincidence that most of the largest number of the electorate were situated in constituencies with a predominance of whites. In 1864 less than a third of the population of the Bahamas lived in New Providence. By the end of the nineteenth century it had become almost half. Still New Providence with its large black population, many well educated, still elected only eight members to the Assembly.

Indeed, the constituency boundaries were to be one of the first problems tackled by the new black government in 1967.

BLACKS DENIED

The former slave owners and their descendants who were mostly white wielded almost unchallenged political power from Emancipation until the 1960s. The vast majority of blacks were denied for the intervening years regular means of political expression. The white oligarchy governed in its own interests and resisted attempts to loosen the grip.

Indeed it perpetuated its own rule and can be held responsible for whatever backwardness in political, social and cultural development, is evident today.

This white minority control only increased the frustrations and resentment of the black population and in spite of the peaceful political revolution in the Bahamas in the 1960s, there still exists undying suspicions and even hatred between local blacks and whites.

QUIET REVOLUTION

Emancipation gave the former slaves theoretical freedom, but was just the beginning of a long hard struggle.

Emancipation well into the nineteenth century was not complete as it was clear that the former slave owners intended to keep the majority of blacks in subordinate social, political and economic positions.

Full participation of the majority of the population took a very long time and there was to be a long period of stagnation in the Bahamas.

Perhaps, because of the lack of economic resources and the dependence on external events the process was slower in the Bahamas than in the larger sugar islands.

The evolution or ‘quiet revolution’ as it has been called, was to be won without bloodshed.

Emancipation was a beginning; Independence will be a continuation of this process.