112 p., On Wednesday October 11th, 1865, a group of malcontented men and women in Jamaica, a British colony, began a rebellion whose aftershocks echoed well beyond the confines of Morant Bay, the small town where it started. Although the initial rebellion lasted for just a few days, its brutal suppression and the implications that it held for the British Empire sparked a controversy that touched on some of the deepest fissures in British society at that time. At its heart, the rebellion highlighted the contested notions of power within the British imperial system. In Jamaica, disenfranchised local peasants rebelled to challenge a political system that excluded and oppressed them.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
361 p., Examines how the crisis of World War I impacted imperial policy and popular claims-making in the British Caribbean. Between 1915 and 1918, tens of thousands of men from the British Caribbean volunteered to fight in World War I and nearly 16,000 men, hailing from every British colony in the region, served in the newly formed British West Indies Regiment (BWIR). In Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, the two colonies that contributed over seventy-five percent of the British Caribbean troops, discussions about the meaning of the war for black, colored, white, East Indian, and Chinese residents sparked heated debates about the relationship among race, gender, and imperial loyalty. To explore these debates, this dissertation foregrounds the social, cultural, and political practices of BWIR soldiers, tracing their engagements with colonial authorities, military officials, and Caribbean civilians throughout the war years.
216 p., Explores the fashioning of Mary Seacole's public image as seen in Seacole's narrative, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, and the periodical press in the British mainland and the Jamaican colony. Contextualizes the precise historical moments Seacole details in her narrative as well as those moments during which Seacole achieves her greatest celebrity: the South American Republic of New Granada in the early 1850s; the Crimean War and its aftermath (1853-1860); Seacole's death (1881); the death of Seacole's sister Louisa Grant (1905); and Seacole's modern rise to fame in Jamaica and in the United Kingdom (c1990 to the present day). Through this contextualization the author argues that the fashioning of Seacole's public image reflects notions of race, nation, gender and colonial power throughout British history.
319 p., Examines the psychological and socio-cultural factors that influence the practice of skin bleaching in the postcolonial society of Jamaica. Additionally, the study outlined the nation's efforts to combat the skin-bleaching phenomenon. The naturalistic paradigm of inquiry was used to frame the study and to collect and analyze data. The sample consisted of fifteen participants--twelve participants (six males and six females) with a history of skin bleaching; a retailer of skin lightening products; a local dermatologist who has written and published in local newspapers on the practice; and a representative from the Ministry of Health who was integrally involved in the national educational efforts to ban the practice. The overall findings show that there is a bias in Jamaica for light skin over dark skin and these values are taught in non-formal and informal ways from very early in life.
WHEN THE People's National Party's (PNP) candidate for East Rural St Andrew, [Damion Crawford], turned up at 11:30 a.m. to be nominated at the Gordon Town old courthouse in St Andrew, on Monday, December 12 he could not have imagined that another Damion Crawford would show up more than an hour later to complete his nomination as an independent candidate. The Electoral Office of Jamaica's (EOJ) returning officer for East Rural St Andrew, Eric Malcolm, told The Weekly Gleaner that both men also shared the same middle initial: the letter 'O'. The EO J's returning officer told The Weekly Gleaner that the independent candidate Crawford had submitted the symbol of a lion, which was not on the EOJ's list of approved symbols.
The most obvious and immediate conclusion from this state of affairs - highlighted by The Weekly Gleaner in the September 11 edition - is that, 177 years after the abolition of slavery, Jamaicans still struggle with questions of race and identity. Self-esteem and status, to a large measure, hinge on the colour of a person's skin. Indeed, the Jamaica conundrum over a complexion-coded approach to status and sense of belonging can be observed daily in the young women and men who bleach their skins in ineffectual searches for resolutions in their favour. They are, of course, spurred on by a popular culture that declares its love for 'mi browning' - brown or lightskinned Jamaicans. 'In this societal arrangement, black or dark-skinned Jamaicans, who are the vast majority, are broadly at the bottom of the social ladder. They are, concomitantly, also at the bottom of the economic ladder.'
"We have to give God thanks for everything that we have accomplished and just look forward to 2012. We got a national record and I am really thankful to be a part of the team that did it. I'm grateful for my teammates and I think that with this team, we would definitely go far with more baton changes and we'll continue to give it our best shot," said [Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce]. Things didn't look too good for the Jamaicans in the semi-finals, which took place just over an hour prior to the final, as the baton exchanges between Fraser Pryce and [Kerron Stewart] on the first handover and Stewart and [Sherone Simpson] were terrible. But the latter believes that the experience of the girls helped to correct the problems in the short time that was available.
Jamaica's veronica Campbell-Brown waves after winning the Women's 100 meters at the Diamond League Athletics meeting on Sunday May 15. in Shanghai, China. American Lashinda Demus. the meet's record holder, finished runner up in a season's best time of 54.58 seconds, with Olympic and World champion Melaine Walker of Jamaica coming third, also in an SB 54.96. The best of the other Caribbean performances came from Jamaican Dwight Thomas. He also finished fourth in the men's 110 hurdles, clocking a season's best 13.31.
An elegant player, Samuels stormed back into the selectors' favour after amassing 830 runs in the Regional FirstClass Championship, the most by any player. Samuels also had an impressive showing in the regional T20 Championships where he finished as the top run-getter. Despite receiving an earlier call-up to the West Indies for the recently concluded ICC Cricket World Cup, the batsman declined the invitation, declaring himself not yet ready to return to international cricket.
