Freedom's Children

The 1938 Labor Rebellion and the Birth of Modern Jamaica

Colin A. Palmer

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781469611709
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

Freedom's Children is the first comprehensive history of Jamaica's watershed 1938 labor rebellion and its aftermath. Colin Palmer argues that, a hundred years after the abolition of slavery, Jamaica's disgruntled workers challenged the oppressive status quo and forced a morally ossified British colonial society to recognize their grievances. The rebellion produced two rival leaders who dominated the political life of the colony through the achievement of independence in 1962. Alexander Bustamante, a moneylender, founded the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union and its progeny, the Jamaica Labour Party. Norman Manley, an eminent barrister, led the struggle for self-government and with others established the People's National Party. Palmer describes the ugly underside of British colonialism and details the persecution of Jamaican nationalists. He sheds new light on the nature of Bustamante's collaboration with the imperial regime, the rise of the trade-union movement, the struggle for constitutional change, and the emergence of party politics in a modernizing Jamaica.

INDEX

Page numbers in italic type indicate illustrations, maps, and tables.

Act of Emancipation of 1833, 357

Adams, David, 198, 204–5, 262

Advisory Board Regulations Act of 1940, 222–23

Advisory Council. See Trades Union Advisory Council

Africa, 24, 25, 26, 64, 66, 68–70, 89

“Africa for the Africans” (slogan), 24

African Americans, 26, 65

African-descent Jamaicans. See Black Jamaicans; Skin color

Agriculture. See Farms and farmworkers

Agriculture minister (Jamaica), 345, 346

Aitken, P. A. (Madam DeMena), 153

Allan, Harold, 39, 289, 347, 349, 355

Alves, Alexander Bain, 115

Anansi (trickster), 177

Anderson, Oswald E., 77–87;

as Advisory Council member, 153;

on colonial race hatred, 65, 77, 83;

constitutional change and, 304;

critics of, 84–85;

resignation/mass meeting support for, 83;

winning of by-election by, 85, 86

Anglicans, 73–74, 89

Anglo-American Caribbean Commission, 336

Annotto Bay, 33

Antigua, 22

Armitage, James A., 134

Arnett, Vernon, 177–78, 239–40, 257, 258, 259, 299, 326

Artisans’ Union, 115

Ashenheim, Leslie, 230, 232

Ashenheim, Lewis, 108

Aspinall, Mrs. (English resident), 72–73

Assembly. See House of Assembly

Atheism, 348

Atlantic slave trade. See Slavery

Attlee, Clement, 30–31, 277

Attorney general, 15

Augier, Roy, 6

Bahamas, 22, 291

Bailey, Amy, 79, 80, 84

Banana industry, 75, 155, 157, 180;

Bustamante-called general strike and,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• FREEDOM’S CHILDREN
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• ILLUSTRATIONS, TABLES, AND MAP
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• ONE: Jamaica in 1938
• TWO: The Labor Rebellion
• THREE: Race and the Colonial Imagination
• FOUR: Looking Back, Moving Forward
• FIVE: Bustamante, Unionism, and the Politics of Performance
• SIX: Bustamante and the Politics of Power
• SEVEN: Challenging Power and Facing the Consequences
• EIGHT: Constitutional Change
• NINE: Party Politics
• CONCLUSION
• NOTES
• SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX