In Black History Month it is important to highlight the contribution of Rudolph Augustus Burke to Jamaica. Born on June 13, 1899, he died on February 2, 1972, 45 years ago today.

A man midnight black in complexion, Rudolph Burke was the first very black student to attend Jamaica College (JC). At that time, in Jamaica, only the elite could afford to send their sons to JC. Poorer students got to JC only by the handful of scholarships then available. Burke was not a scholarship holder, but his father, who was a farmer and a butcher, was able to raise the money to send him to JC, which he attended between 1909 and 1916. While there, he was track, cricket and football captain in 1916.

Upon the death of his father, Rudolph Burke took over his estate in Llandewey, St Thomas, when he was only 19 years old. He became a parish councillor in St Thomas at the age of 21 and served for 30 years until age 51, during which he served for a while as chairman. While Rudolph Burke served as a minister without portfolio in pre-independent Jamaica, his greatest contribution was in agriculture with emphasis on the dignity of farming. Because of the slavery of our forefathers, farming in Jamaica was always associated with forced labour and hardships.

Serving as president of the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS) for more than 20 years, Rudolph Burke was the first Jamaican to do so. Previously, the colonial governor of Jamaica was titular head of the JAS. During the JAS presidency of Rudolph Burke, the annual Denbigh show was established in 1953. It was certainly a great encouragement for agriculture at a time when there was a move to cut down on the importation of food from abroad.

Juan Thomson, who worked at Seprod, was for 70 years the organist at Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Church in Eastern Kingston. He died at the age of 100 in 2010. He was very proud to tell me that Rudolph Burke visited his home in eastern Kingston to give him his prize money for either the best rooster or best hen at a Denbigh show in the 1950s. And Juan Thomson raised his chickens at his yard in Rollington Town in eastern Kingston, which was not unusual then.

Rudolph Burke was the first person to highlight the importance of growing cassava in Jamaica. It was during the Second World War that both Jamaica Welfare (later Social Development Commission) and the JAS had a joint campaign dubbed ‘Eat what you can and can what you can’t’. There were serious food shortages during the war as imported items, including flour, were scarce. Apart from that, Burke saw a possibility in exporting cassava in keeping with Jamaica’s exports of raw produce at the time.

Six decades later, then Agriculture Minister Christopher Tufton (now minister of health) would be credited for encouraging the cultivation of cassava. Had the supporters of the People’s National Party (PNP) continued with their political education, as in the earlier days, they would never have criticised Tufton for making that appeal. When Rudolph Burke, a foundation member of the PNP, made that appeal, he had the full backing of his party president, Norman Washington Manley, who was also the founder of Jamaica Welfare.

Burke was a founding member of several agricultural co-operatives, including the Blue Mountain Coffee Co-operative. This was the start of Blue Mountain Coffee as part of what is today called Brand Jamaica. But the importance of the agricultural co-operatives then must be seen against the backdrop of a time when the Jamaican economy was run by raw agricultural products. Jamaican farm products were very important during the war, not only for local consumption but also for supplying food for the war effort.

In a very real way, globalisation in the 1990s, as a result of the North Atlantic Free Trade Area, was the final nail in the coffin of Jamaica’s agricultural exports. It was also the final nail in the coffin of all of the negotiations done overseas that included Rudolph Burke and Earle Maynier (then a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture, later Jamaica’s first high commissioner to Canada and coincidentally one of my grandfathers). Several types of agricultural produce were traded due to negotiations with England in those days.

There is a story about the days when Alexander Bustamante (later Sir Alexander) was chief minister of Jamaica. He led a delegation to discuss trade of agricultural produce in England at a time when Jamaica was still a colony of Great Britain. In those days, travel to England by air took two days unlike the 11 hours that it takes by jet plane today. Bustamante was told by the attaché for the secretary of state for the colonies that the delegation could only meet for 20 minutes.

Bustamante told the attaché: “Tell him that we did not travel 5,000 miles to talk for 20 minutes. We will come back when he has time.” The entire schedule for the following day was rearranged so that the Jamaican delegation could discuss trade just because Bustamante stood up to the British cabinet minister. Both Burke and Maynier were members of that delegation which was at the time very important to Jamaica’s economy.

The importance of the small farmers to Jamaica stretched to politics. A headline in the Star of February 18, 1952 spoke to a story that Rudolph Burke had turned down a hefty bribe by leaders of the Farmers Party. Apparently, some people wanted him to swing the JAS behind that party for the election that would eventually be held on January 12, 1955. The story was that Rudolph Burke turned down the offer. It has been written by historians that the small farmers followed Rudolph Burke’s decision to stay with the PNP and not join the Farmers Party, which contributed to the PNP’s victory in 1955.

Yes, I am a relative of the late Rudolph Burke. I am one of his grandsons.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com