The Tribune

By SIMON

The late Roman Catholic Vicar General Monsignor Preston Moss grew up a stone’s throw away from the top of the hill East Street, not far from Mortimer Candy Kitchen.

Mortimer’s, which produced a rainbow of confectionary and other treats enjoyed by generations of Bahamians, was one of many black-owned enterprises which populated New Providence. The business grew from a dream into a cornucopia of confectionary delights for generations of Bahamians.

The website Ramble Bahamas describes the candy factory as “a landmark in the Over-the-Hill” community since 1928. The business was started by Ulric Mortimer Sr, who first learned to make candies from his mother when he was a child.

“He was motivated to set up a manufacturing company to provide jobs for young black children in his community.

“After attending candy college in the United States, he first opened his doors on Hospital Lane, and as his business became more well-known, moved to the location on East Street where Mortimer Candies is today, under the name of ‘The Best Ever Candy Company’.”

Monsignor Moss’s homestead stood in walking distance from Mortimer’s, and the Fort Hill, Mason’s Addition, Grant’s Town, Bain Town and other communities of former slaves, now free people.

They strove to overcome the indignity of slavery by reigniting their dignity and sense of possibility through unyielding struggle and the instruments and fruits of transcendence, including political and economic power.

Some history of Over-the-Hill is vital to understanding the industry, in multiple senses, of those who helped transform The Bahamas from a colonial outpost to a sovereign nation.

Gregory’s Arch was named after Governor John Gregory. It was completed with slave labour. The Arch was a gateway or a passage from one world to another.

While slaves and their descendants laboured in the City of Nassau, they could not live in the City. When 18th and 19th and mid-20th century blacks passed through Gregory Arch, they were crossing racial, social and economic lines.

Though not as severe, Gregory’s Arch was somewhat similar to the barbed wire fences in apartheid South Africa, which separated black townships from commercial centres along racial and class divides.

While these lines could be temporarily crossed in the interest of exploiting cheap Bahamian labour, the boundaries they represented were cast in impervious stone and could not be breached. 

Gregory Arch was a tunnel cut through a hill to connect Nassau with the Over-the-Hill settlements and communities of Bain and Grant’s Towns. These communities were called Over-the-Hill because they were located south of a long ridge overlooking Nassau City and harbour.

The tunnel was carved out to allow working class Bahamians, the descendants of ex and recently freed slaves, a short cut from their home communities to work in the City. This was more of a favor to the merchants than to the workers.

Gregory’s Arch was architecturally and morally juxtaposed to one of the more famous buildings in the Colony, Government House, sitting majestically atop Mt. Fitzwilliam, the official office and residence of the Colonial Governor.

Grant’s Town received its name from Major General Sir Lewis Grant who was the Governor of The Bahamas between 1820-1829.

During Sir Lewis Grant’s administration, he instructed the Surveyor-General John James Burnside to lay out a settlement behind the town of Nassau for African slaves. The town later became known as Grant’s Town in honour of Sir Lewis.

Because many of the newly released Africans had just arrived from Africa, Bain and Grant’s Towns maintained a strong African identity, including many vibrant African customs.

From around 1850 to 1950, Grant’s Town contained more than half the population of New Providence, with numerous homes, many of which had gardens. While downtown Nassau was the commercial capital, the heartbeat of New Providence for the mass of people was actually Bain and Grant’s Town.

Much of the land in these towns was considered of lesser commercial value to the elites. Bain and Grant’s Town were located behind the ridge that separated the City of Nassau from these communities.

The separation cum segregation of the people in these areas was deliberate, because by the mid-1800s the African population grew dramatically with the coming of the Loyalists.

With the black population overtaking the white population, the colonial power thought it necessary to separate the African presence from the town of Nassau.

Segregation had myriad effects. It perpetuated racism and inequality. It also engendered in the oppressed the need for self-reliance; the creation of new bonds of community and hope; and a commitment to struggle and inner pride. It animated various forms of collective and individual self-expression, such as Junkanoo.

Monsignor Moss often recalled the racial inequality and discrimination unceasingly visited upon the majority of Bahamians by the colonialists and the white merchant elite.

The oligarchy greedily hogged commercial interests for themselves, denying the majority of black Bahamians and many white Bahamians economic opportunities reserved for a few well-connected families.

Quite a number of Greek Bahamians and others who were not a part of the white elite were also denied a host of economic benefits and special arrangements.

Yet amidst the economic and social discrimination, Monsignor Moss had vivid memories of the vital and vibrant communities of black Bahamians Over-the-Hill and in settlements of freed slaves such as Fox Hill.

The familial, social and economic networks of these communities included: churches, shops, restaurants, burial societies, lodges, nightclubs, and a host of other black-owned enterprises.

He recalled the entrepreneurial zeal of many skilled black Bahamians, including business people, who nurtured and enjoyed their own social milieu with a quilt of associations, societies and clubs.

Many of these Bahamians wanted discrimination dismantled so that they and their children might flourish even more. They did not pine for membership in various white clubs nor did they have an antipathy toward white Bahamians.

Nassau enjoyed some of the finest seamstresses and tailors, who could easily compete with other similar professionals or clothiers found anywhere in the world. One was the late Leroy Archer, affectionately known as “Uncle Lee”,

The four-storey Reinhard Hotel on Baillou Hill Road and Tin Shop Corner, accommodated “people of color during the days of segregation.”

As Ramble Bahamas notes: “Initially designed and constructed by Dr Claudius Roland Walker and Mrs Mabel Walker in the 1930s, the hotel furnished the stage for everything from social soirees to local business operation to pivotal moments in Bahamian political history.”

The hotel “served as headquarters to the Progressive Liberal Party during the landmark 1967 election that led to Majority Rule”.

The opening of Government High School in 1925 further revealed the abundance of talent among young black Bahamians hungry for educational opportunity.

It also revealed the scarcity of opportunity for young black Bahamians, whose dreams often festered, or were deferred and unrealised, because of blatant discrimination and the poisonous mindset that black children were simply not as smart or as capable or as equal as others.

Over many decades, Government High would educate many black and white young people.

The sad history of how the school’s mission was upended by some of the very people who benefitted from the institution is an example of how a kleptocracy of certain black interests betrayed new generations of black, young and gifted Bahamians.

Like many others of his generation, a sense of inferiority never inhabited the sinews and synapses of Monsignor Moss’s soul or imagination. His parents and grandparents imbued in the young Preston, a sense of pride and dignity as a human being, as a Bahamian, as “a child of God”, who also happened to be black.

The very notion that he was inferior or less talented or less capable than another human being because of the color of his skin was an anathema, “an affront to God”, a specious lie, laid bare by the splendid priestly ministry of a princely native son.

A friend recalls his grandmother, who owned a grocery shop on Shirley Street. Her husband was one of the first black men to become a sergeant on the Royal Bahamas Police Force. Their story was typical of a burgeoning black middle class. Their four children went on to become professionals in their fields.

Many black Bahamians enjoyed a sophisticated cum cosmopolitan worldview, with an appreciation for educational and economic advancement. In quite a number of homes, books and music enlivened the spirits and yearnings of black Bahamians.

A number of such individuals helped form the Progressive Liberal Party, which gave rise to party politics, a major advancement in the country’s political development.

Many of Monsignor Moss’s contemporaries recall the vibrancy and energy of black entrepreneurs, an economic force they wanted to help to unleash in the development of a modern Bahamas teeming with energy and the hunger for opportunity.

Despite a treasury and rich legacy of black achievement, there are those who have, over many decades, continued to spin the false, prejudiced tale that there was little black enterprise or entrepreneurial spirit Over-the-Hill before Majority Rule.

Such a tall tale is a deep-seated prejudice and grand lie easily detected, arrested, convicted and sentenced to the graveyard of racist conceits, countered by beautiful facts and individuals, and a narrative of enterprise and achievement by black Bahamians.