The Tribune

By Eileen Carron

Editor

The Bahamas today suffers the fall-out from, but has no resemblance to, The Bahamas of the days in which Donald McKinney lived. His father, Herbert, owned the oldest retail store in The Bahamas - John S George - and had a large family, the youngest son’s body having been lost somewhere on the beaches of Normandy during that historic landing.

Donald was the lawyer who established the law firm of McKinney, Bancroft and Hughes. He was a quiet man and, as many of his social class, he belonged to the yacht club and was quite the yachtsman. I remember that dreadful day when I sat with his father and a group of friends listening to BASRA’s announcements as they searched for him. He was lost at sea.

Just imagine a Bahamas where every business on Bay Street was owned by a white Bahamian (hence the name “Bay Street Boys”). There were no political parties in those days. The only movie theatre — the Savoy Theatre — on Bay Street refused to admit people of colour — their theatre was “over the hill” near the Southern Recreation Grounds. The JP Sands store, owned by the family of the late Sir Stafford Sands, was the shop that both shades from white to black could shop – only the blacks shopped on one side and the whites on the other! The hotels admitted no one of colour and one hotel even excluded Jews.

This all came to a head around 1954 when late one night my father got a call from Hugh Springer, at that time the Registrar of the University of the West Indies, later governor of Barbados, and one of the most important men in the field of education in the West Indies. Sir Hugh with a political delegation was flying back to England by way of Nassau and Bermuda. All members of the delegation were put up at a hotel for the night. Sir Hugh was told that there was no hotel for him and so he would have to sit on an airport bench until the next day to resume the flight to Bermuda. My father was the only person Sir Hugh remembered meeting at a social function in London. When my father got the call he was in the middle of his editorial for the next day. He dropped everything, drove to the airport and brought Sir Hugh home where he spent the night with us and, after breakfast, was taken back to the airport to catch his flight. By the time Sir Hugh landed in Bermuda, the officials, having been notified of how he was treated in Nassau, laid out the red carpet for him.

My father was so angry that he swore that such an incident would never happen again in Yhe Bahamas, and so he moved his resolution at his first opportunity in the House.

In those days the House met at 8pm and I was the reporter for The Tribune. The Tribune had announced that the Resolution would be moved. You can imagine the crowds that encircled the House. It was an angry crowd that was tired of humiliation. There was no airconditioning in those days, so all the windows were wide open and the remarks from the crowd could be heard in the chamber above, as below they could hear what was going on in the House above.

When the division came it was a brave white man who would stand up and vote on the wrong side. In fact there were two white men – Dr Raymond Sawyer and Donald McKinney.

However, it was Donald McKinney who prevented bloodshed that night. When someone in the gallery shouted for all lights to be turned off when my father was threatened with arrest, it was a quick thinking Donald McKinney who moved that the House be adjourned to the next day. The adjournment was agreed.

My father walked downstairs with my mother and myself, stood on the steps of the House and tried to talk sense to the crowd. One young lady, whose father served with my father on the Sahara in the First World War, pulled a butcher’s knife from her blouse, telling my father that she was going to “chop” anyone who touched him. The “Bay Street Boys” with Sir Stafford Sands in the lead were chased down Bay Street with the crowd behind them and the police trying to protect them. My father ordered the young lady to put the knife away, return home and be at home by the time he got to his own home and called her father. She quickly disappeared.

It took a brave white man that night to face his social set and say that he was no longer prepared to accept their prejudices – equality for all, he said.

I am satisfied that it was his quick thinking, asking for an adjournment, that avoided blood being spilled that night.

It took courage for him to cross the line that night – and he stood up and crossed it.