Farewell Dudley Thompson — champion of the Race

•Bemoaned Jamaican leaders’ shame and fear of blackness •‘They taught us by lies that we were inferior’

Monday, February 13, 2012

Ambassador Dudley Joseph Thompson — who died on January 20 and was buried on February 10, 2012 — spent a lifetime as a champion of the Black Race, preaching the philosophy of National Hero Marcus Garvey and inspiring Africans to soar above their inherited station in life. In the following excerpt, he bemoaned the shame and fear shown by Jamaican leaders to talk about Blacks and Africans. He was delivering the keynote address on "Pan-African History and Garvey" at the 2007 Pan-African Summit held at the University of the West Indies, Mona in St Andrew:

"One of the strangest things I find about my country, which I love so much, one of the weaknesses I find in this land of ours, Jamaica, Marcus Garvey's island, is the fact that the people who run this country — I'm not talking about party politics or anything petty like that — the leaders of this country, preachers, everybody; the leaders of this country don't like to talk about Blacks and Africans. It's a weakness, because we are Blacks and we are Africans... Why be ashamed... Are we afraid of something?"

"...I remember many years ago when I was in the Senate. I moved a motion that every school, every university college, kindergarten, should teach the life and philosophy of Marcus Garvey. I moved that motion in the House and it took 12 months before it came to debate, because we don't want to talk about Black people and Marcus Garvey, because that's racism..."

"Every week I brought it (the motion) on the table, until once, I supposed they were tired of seeing the thing; tired of seeing mi face (drawing on Marley's lyrics)... One man whose name I won't mention got up and said: 'No, sir, you can't have this compulsory teaching of Marcus Garvey. Because if you do, you have to teach the life and philosopy of Alexander Bustamante as well.' What is the philosophy of Bustamante, I asked.

"Another one (I won't call his name either) and a lady (she was the minister of education) so she should know better. She objected to this compulsory teaching. 'Compulsory means communism, and communism means you are forcing it on the people.' "I said, don't you believe in compulsory education?

"For years I've been trying to get the people to study what that man (Garvey) meant to this country. Everyone of us is better off because of what Marcus Garvey did. He was a great man. And I could show you some of the ways that came personally to me, to measure the greatness of that little man who had to fight the leaders of this country that put him in court, put him in jail...

"The greatest man this country has ever produced is Marcus Garvey; the only man who has ever given anything like a philosophy to this country. If you know, tell me another.

We don't have any clout, because we don't believe in ourselves. That is a weakness y'know; something called negrophobia, we have to talk about. It's one of the legacies of slavery where they taught us not to believe in ourselves and taught us by lies that we were inferior; taught us that we were descendants of slaves. Of course, my ancestors were slaves, and I'm not afraid to admit that. But don't teach my children that I was descended from slaves. Teach them that I was descended out of a system of slavery.

"Marcus Garvey taught us that you can be equal to anybody in the world if you believe in yourself. That is the direction that we ought to go and the direction we will go."

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Farewell Dudley Thompson — champion of the Race