This month
in history

Theatre boycott deals fatal blow
to segregation
July 2, 1959


Progressive Group leader Stanley Ratteray.

Movie theatres reopened with open seating after a two-week boycott that dealt a fatal blow to segregation in Bermuda.

The boycott, which was organised by members of the Progressive Group, began on June 15.

Many of its members were university graduates who had returned home after studying overseas and vowed to make much needed changes to their homeland. 

They had been meeting regularly and in secret at the Flatts home of Rosalind and Edouard Williams, where they formulated plans for a total transformation of the society.

They decided on a date for the start of the boycott and on the eve of Day One, working under cover of darkness, they blanketed the island with flyers that urged patrons to stay away from theatres.

Things started slowly, but gradually gathered momentum. The numbers of people who began mingling outside theatres in Hamilton increased; there were heated debates in Parliament—where blacks were in the minority—and promises that blacks would be able to sit anywhere they wanted when the new Rosebank Theatre was completed.

James Pearman, president of the company that owned the theatres, famously misread the social temperature—he described the boycott as “a storm in a teacup.”

 

Crucial to the boycott’s success were soapbox orators, among them Kingsley Tweed, Kenny Ebbin, Richard “Comrade” Lynch and Robert “Jungle Bunny” Smith, who delivered electrifying speeches outside the theatres.

Soon theatres were empty and owners were left with no choice but to close them.  Victory came with a dramatic capitulation—owners announced that theatres would reopen on July 2, and that blacks would be able to sit anywhere they wanted. Hotels and restaurants followed suit.

The peaceful revolution marked the beginning of the end of segregation and members of the Progressive Group got on with their lives.

They were never officially recognized until the 40th anniversary of the boycott in 1999, when social activist Glenn Fubler organized a tribute for surviving members on the steps of Hamilton City Hall, on behalf of the organization Beyond Barriers.

The boycott was also the subject of Errol Williams’ documentary When Voices Rise…, which premiered at the Bermuda International Film Festival in 2002, when it won the Audience Choice Award

Members of the Progressive Group were Stanley Ratteray, the leader, Rosalind and Edouard Williams, Clifford Wade, Marva Phillips, Coleridge Williams, Rudolph and Vera Commissiong, Clifford and Florenz Maxwell, Eugene Woods, Esme and Lancelot Swan, Dr. Erskine Simmons, William Francis, William Walywn and Gerald and Izola Harvey.
Born this month

Matilda Louisa "Mattie" Crawford

July 30, 1879-September 29, 1948
Teacher, founder Bermuda Union of Teachers


Matilda Crawford: dedicated to teaching.

Mattie Crawford had a lower public profile than that of her cousin Edith Crawford, and a shorter life, but she was no less committed to education.

She and Edith were members of two storied quartets in education. The Central School (now Victor Scott School) on Glebe Road, Pembroke, was formed from an amalgamation of their schools and two others. The Crawford cousins were also two of the four founders of the Bermuda Union of Teachers (BUT).

Born in Hamilton, Mattie Crawford was the daughter of Charles Henry Crawford, who was a printer, and  Mary Louisa (White) Crawford.

Details about Crawford’s early life have been lost in the mists of time, but it’s likely that she attended Jairus Swan’s school in Hamilton, where Edith and her brother Robert, received their early education.

Later, she set up her own school at Till’s Hill. The date she started the Till’s Hill school is not known, but it was in operation by 1908. Her schoolhouse was in a cottage, further up the street from her cousin Edith’s Central School, which she established in 1908 at Alaska Hall on Court Street, Hamilton (where the Progressive Labour Party headquarters is now located).

The clamour for education was such there were always more students than places to accommodate them.  By the 1920s, Edith and Mattie Crawford’s schools were overcrowded and their one-room schoolhouses, where they taught reading, writing and arithmetic and scripture, were in poor condition.

Government was forced into action. In 1925, it bought more than five acres of land at Glebe Road, and began building a new school in phases.

In May 1928, Mattie and Edith Crawford moved into the new building. Edith Crawford was appointed head teacher, and according to a report in Central School’s archives, the cousins had a “harmonious” relationship, “working and planning everything together in perfect unison.”

Rev. Rufus Stovell’s North Village school moved into the new building in 1929, and Mary Louise Williams, who had a school on Pond Road, followed with her pupils in 1931, thus completing the amalgamation of the four schools.

C.A. Isaac-Henry was appointed head teacher of Central, while Edith, Mattie and Rufus Stovell became assistant head teachers, or deputy principals.

Retired teacher Ruth Talbot, who was a student at Central in 1931, said Mattie Crawford was  “motherly”. While she was stern, she was more approachable than the formidable Edith, whom many students feared until they got to know her. Mattie taught the fifth standard, Talbot said, while Edith taught students in their last two years of primary school.

In February 1919, Mattie and Edith, Rev. Stovell and Adele Tucker, the headmistress of Paget Glebe School, started the BUT in the graveyard of St. John’s Church, Pembroke.

They were attending the funeral of a teacher, who was the third to die in quick succession, and in dire financial straits. The four were moved to form the BUT to press for higher pay and better working conditions for black teachers. All four founders were active BUT members, and served on its executive until the 1930s.

Crawford had a busy domestic life, although she never married or had children of her own. She and her sister Catherine helped raise two nieces, Etheline Scott Pitt and Muriel Scott Rowling, the daughters of her sister, Loretta Scott.

Mattie and Catherine lived in the family home Wingham in Pembroke West, although in their later years, they moved into their brother Robert Crawford’s home, Wrexford, where they helped nurse him in his last years. Mattie Crawford was also an active member of St. Paul AME Church.

Crawford took early retirement from Central on December 31, 1942 and then operated a school from her home. She died six years later, at age 69, of a heart attack. She was buried at St. John’s Church following a service at St. Paul’s.

Read Matilda Crawford's full biography

Previous Bermuda Biographies home pages by month:

Celebrating emancipation

A series of events to commemorate Emancipation will kick off with a celebration at the Warwick Rubber Tree on Saturday, June 19 at 5 p.m. ‘A Woman Named Prince’, choreographed by Conchita Ming, is the Bermudian slave and abolitionist Mary Prince. It features historical narrations and the Mount Zion AME Church Male Voice Choir.

A week later on Sunday, July 27 at 5.30 p.m., a service of praise will take place at the Tucker’s Town burial site.  The service will feature Marsden First United Methodist Church Male Voice Choir and the St. Philip’s Liturgical Dance Ministry.

On Monday, July 28, the Somerset Brigade Band will lead a Friendly Society march celebrating black fellowship and entrepreneurship. The march, which will get under way at 6.30 p.m. at Barr’s Bay Park and end at Union Square, will pay tribute to the friendly societies, or lodges, which sprang up after emancipation as self-help organisations for the newly freed slaves. 

All events have been organised by Government’s Department of Community and Cultural Affairs to commemorate the Emancipation of slaves, which occurred in Bermuda and throughout the rest of the British Empire on August 1, 1834.

Settlement and slavery

Emancipation Day and Somers Day are the two seminal events in Bermuda’s history. Somers Day commemorates the wreck of the Sea Venture off St. Catherine’s Beach on July 28, 1609, an event that led to Bermuda’s settlement. Somers Day will be observed on August 1, and Emancipation Day on July 31. Taken together, they are the dates of the two-day annual Cup Match public holiday.

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Stamp of approval for Brown, Browne

The Post Office has issued a new set of ‘Pioneers of Progress’ stamps, honouring lawyer and PLP politician Dame Lois Browne-Evans and Roosevelt Brown. Dame Lois, Bermuda’s first female lawyer, served in Parliament for 40 years and was the long-time leader of the PLP. Roosevelt Brown was the leader of the Committee for Universal Adult Suffrage, whose activism led to the abolition of the property vote in the early 1960s.


Photo courtesy Carol D. Hill

Government buys
historic home 

The home of Berkeley Institute founder Samuel David Robinson [above] has passed into Government hands. The purchase price for the property, located on Princess Street, Hamilton, was  $2.5 million.

Robinson, a prominent 19th century businessman, met with 10 other men at Wantley in October 1879 to discuss the feasibility of establishing a high school. Their vision became a reality 18 years later, when the Berkeley Institute opened its doors. Berkeley was the leading high school for black Bermudians for more than a century. Government says it will use the property for housing.

Darrell exhibit continues

A Bermuda Archives exhibition focusing the life of pilot Jemmy Darrell and other free blacks continues through October.  ‘The Life & Times of Pilot Jemmy Darrell, 1793 to 1816’, explores the legal status of free persons
of colour in the age of slavery through historical
documents written by Darrell. Darrell was a slave whose superb piloting skills won him his freedom. He was also one of the first blacks to own property. The Archives is open from 9 am to 5 pm Monday to Friday.

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