Black people -- Jamaica; Jamaica; Slavery -- Jamaica
“Certainly the wickedest three hours,” he wrote concerning a night
attack up country, “I ever put in.” We could not guess the range in the
cloudy moonlight. The Germans held a hill, we had not a scrap of cover,
the breast-high grass prevented charging, and also made the men stand up
to shoot. By 6.30 a.m. the Germans cleared out precipitately, leaving us
in possession of a very good camp.
“The men were splendid. Tmoru Calfa, a sergeant-major, shot through the
spine high up, lay down by his section and controlled their fire. He
died next day. His was only one instance of their conduct.”
When the Great Roll is called, not among the least surely will be found
the name of that sergeant, pagan from the north of the Gold Coast, who,
being shot high up in the spine, lay down beside his men, controlled
their firing and died next day. Not the Unknown Warrior buried in
Westminster Abbey could have done more.
Which man will the negro race in future years think upon more gladly as
its representative, Marcus Garvey or Tmoru Calfa?
The coming of the negro race to the New World marks a most extraordinary
phase in the world's history. They came unwillingly as slaves, and
as slaves they were held with all the ignominy inseparable from that
condition. Of the race in America I know nothing save what little I have
seen in the streets of New Orleans, where they seem as far apart from
the ruling race as the mountain tops in Jamaica are from the river-beds.
But in Jamaica, whatever there may have been in the old days, there
is now no such cleft. There is, of course, a difference, but it is a
difference that is passing, that will pass as the years go on and the
dark man fits himself to take his place in the world as the social equal
of the white.
Already he sits in the Legislature. He has come a long, long way up from
the chained savage brought in the slave ships. I hope that if a dark man
reads this book he will not think unkindly of me for writing as if there
were a difference between black and white. There is, it would be foolish
to ignore it, but it is only the difference of education and training.
We must remember that in past ages the Anglo-Saxon stood in the
market-place in Rome chained and in slavery, that blue eyes and flaxen
hair marked the savage, and dark complexion and black eyes the civilised
man. The time of servitude of the black man is a little closer. He has
to come up the same stony path that the white man trod, and he will do
it more easily and more quickly--he is doing it--because the white man
has prepared the way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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