Founding of BUT
February 1919
The founding of the Bermuda Union of Teachers (BUT) in St. John’s Church graveyard in Pembroke is one of the more enduring stories in education. It happened because the four founders were spurred into action by the deaths of three teachers in a short space of time.
Teachers were poorly paid at the time, and many had to rely on support from their families. Rev. Rufus Stovell, a teacher as well as an AME minister, Adele Tucker, Matilda “Mattie” Crawford and Edith Crawford were so struck by the dead teachers’ impoverished circumstances, they made plans to form a union at the third funeral.
They formed themselves into four committees in the graveyard, and each was given the task of gathering support for a union from a designated district.
The BUT’s first president was Rev. R. H.Tobitt, an AME minister from the Caribbean who was working in Bermuda at the time. Edith Crawford was its first secretary and Adele Tucker was its first treasurer.
It was the start of a long struggle to raise salaries of black teachers. The fight for more pay and better conditions moved into a new phase in the 1930s and early 40s when a new generation of teachers, among them T. Neville Tatem, F.S. Furbert, Arnold Francis and Kenneth Robinson, returned to Bermuda after training overseas.
The BUT is Bermuda’s first union and was the first to register in 1947 after Bermuda’s first trade union law was passed in 1946.
At the BUT’s 40th anniversary banquet at Leopards Club in 1959, when Adele Tucker and Edith Crawford were honoured as surviving founders, Tucker explained why the BUT had been formed: “Secondly, the teachers of the aided white schools were paid for children that they did not teach, while teachers of the aided coloured schools were not paid for children that they did teach. This was considered {a} most iniquitous infringement on the rights of the teachers.”
In 1964, the BUT merged with the Teachers’ Association of Bermuda, which represented white teachers, to form the Amalgamated Bermuda Union of Teachers, but it subsequently reverted to its original name. The BUT is now the bargaining agent for all teachers in the government school system.
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| Born this month |
| James "Dick" Richards
February 14 1872-January 14, 1965
Businessman and philanthropist
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Illustration from 'Bermuda’s History Makers in Bermudian History—25 Picture Card Biographies’'
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James “Dick” Richards was a Jamaican immigrant who came to Bermuda with the British West India Regiment (BWIR) and became one of the Island’s richest black men.
The businessman and philanthropist was one of the island’s more colourful personalities. He died at age 92 while playing cards with friends at the Canadian Hotel, a hotel turned boarding house on Reid Street East in Hamilton, which he had owned for 46 years. Richards was reportedly the first black person in Bermuda to own a hotel licence and was the Island’s oldest bar owner at the time of his death.
Richards had seen active service in faraway places before he was posted to Bermuda with the Third Battalion of the BWIR, which was later known as the West Indies Regiment. BWIR soldiers were called Bully Roosters because of their colourful costumes.
Richards was born in Beersheba in St. Elizabeth, Jamaica and started out in life as a baker. He enlisted with the BWIR, which was a division of the British Armed Forces, on May 20, 1888 and fought in the Ashanti War in West Africa. He had returned to Jamaica by 1897, the year he went to England with the BWIR to take part in Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations.
In 1899, he was shipped off to South Africa to serve in the Boer War. He spent only six weeks in Pretoria, and was transferred to St. Helena, an island in the South Atlantic, away from the action. He later said it was because it created an embarrassment for the British “for black West Indians to be allowed to fight for the Queen when black Africans were prevented from doing the same”.
In January 1903, he arrived in Bermuda, and was discharged from the BWIR two months later. His first job was at the Bermuda Bakery but he later found employment with the British Royal Engineers at Prospect, Devonshire, as a labourer by day and in the canteen at night. Within four months, he was promoted to manager of the canteen, which was run by Gosling’s.
In May 1909, he was transferred to the St. George’s canteen as an assistant manager, but he only lasted there a week because he didn’t like the East End. He then returned to Hamilton and ran the Harbour View Bar, which was the start of his career as a business owner. His wife, Jane Victoria Smith, a Montserrat native whom he married in 1907, had encouraged him to start his own business.
In 1919, he brought the Canadian House building, renovated it and changed its name to the Canadian Hotel, becoming the first black person to own a hotel. In 1923, he purchased an adjoining property and ran it as a bar.
He spent his newfound wealth on numerous causes—scholarships, the Salvation Army and Berkeley Institute. He was a major benefactor of St. Paul AME Church, helping to underwrite the cost of its stained glass windows, organ and balcony.
Richards was also a major sponsor of cricket events. Like Dr. E. F. Gordon, a contemporary and fellow Caribbean immigrant, Richards was an avid cricket fan. Gordon was instrumental in bringing the first West Indian cricket team to Bermuda in 1939 and Richards, along with Gordon and others, helped fund it, which was a major undertaking.
He also organised a women’s version of Cup Match, which was played at White Hill Field during the1930s. For years, billiards players in participating bars competed for the Dick Richards Trophy.
Richards, an imposing man whose physical stature matched his personality, lived a full life. He celebrated his 90th birthday by inviting friends to drop by Canadian Hotel all day until midnight, when he cut his cake.
He told a Royal Gazette reporter on that occasion: “I get on well. I make good progress from giving freely to charity. I don’t think anything is better than giving to charity. That’s my success.”
About 800 people braved blustery weather to attend his funeral at St. Paul AME Church—a sign of his standing in the community.
He was survived by his wife, two daughters, Ellen Richards and Doris Pearman and three grandchildren.
The Canadian Hotel has long passed out of Richards’ family—most of his surviving descendants no longer live in Bermuda. Despite its dilapidated state, the building remains a Hamilton landmark. It was last a rooming house for single men and is now awaiting development as an office building.
Sources: The Bermuda Recorder, January 16, 1965; The Royal Gazette, February 15, 1962 and January 15 and 18, 1965; ‘Bermuda’s History Makers in Bermudian History—25 Picture Card Biographies’, Published by June Masters of FAME magazine
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The Bermuda Sun is publishing a series of profiles of trailblazing black Bermudians in honour of Black History Month. Profiles will run in each edition of the Bermuda Sun throughout February.
It's being done in partnership with the Government TV station CITV, which will air short profiles of four people each week, as well as give viewers the opportunity to take part in a quiz to win one of eight plasma TVs. Tune in to CITV daily (seven days a week) at 7am, 11am, 4pm and 7.30pm to hear the trivia questions and log on to www.citv.gov.bm to search for the correct answers.
Profiles of six black Bermudians are also running all month on VSB’s two radio stations, Mix 103.1 FM and 1450 AM. Three of the profiles, which are read out by CedarBridge students, are of Mary Prince, W. L. Tucker and Charles Lloyd Tucker and have been adapted from bios on bermudabiographies.bm.
BNG pays tribute to
Byllee Lang
A new exhibit at the Bermuda National Gallery (BNG) turns the spotlight on Canadian-born sculptor Byllee Lang (above), who moved to Bermuda in 1946 and became a major influence on the developing art scene in the post-war years.
‘A Tribute to Byllee Lang—Inspirational Artist and Educator’ opened at the BNG January as part of Winter Exhibitions 2008. The exhibit features surviving works from her Bermuda years, including busts of Esso Steel Band leader Rudy Commissiong and carriage driver Davy Douglas, who were well-known personalities of the period. Lang’s former colleagues and students also recount their memories of her in a short documentary.
Lang’s greatest work is at the Anglican Cathedral—statues of Christ and 14 saints, which the Church commissioned around 1958. Lang, who also designed floats for the annual Floral Pageant, had the unique ability to bring people from both races and all backgrounds together—which was a special quality in the era of segregation. She was a gifted teacher who was generous about sharing her creative gifts with young artists. Her sudden death in 1966, the day before she turned 58, left a deep void in the arts scene.
The Lang tribute is running in conjunction with ‘Inuit Art’ and ‘African Affinities—Traditional African Art and its Influence on Contemporary Western Art’ and its Bermuda Collection. Winter Exhibitions 2008 runs until April 4. The BNG’s opening times are Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
>> Byllee Lang on Bermuda Biographies
>> Exhibition essay by Bermuda Biographies’ Meredith Ebbin
Media room named for pioneering publisher
Premier Dr. Ewart Brown has unveiled a brand-new media room and named it after pioneering publisher, A.B. Place. The A.B. Place Media Room, equipped with the latest high-tech gadgetry and built at a cost of $130,500, will be used for Government press conferences.
It bears the name of Alfred Brownlow Place, who founded the Bermuda Recorder in 1925 with Henry Hughes, David Augustus, Joaquin Martin and James Rabain, to give black Bermudians a voice at a time when they had limited political and economic power.
Mr. Place, who was a printer by trade, was manager and editor at various times during the newspaper’s history.
Mr. Place, whose son Brownlow and daughters Hilda Place and Rhoda Burrows attended the unveiling ceremony, ran the Recorder with his wife Julia for 47 years. The Recorder ceased operation in 1975, one week before its 50th anniversary.
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