The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Woodes Rodgers arrived in Nassau in 1729 for his second tour of duty as Governor of the Bahamas. In his commission he was given specific instructions to establish a general assembly to pass laws as the need arose. He issued a proclamation on 25th August, 1729 calling for the election of freeholders in New Providence, Eleuthera, and Harbour Island.

The qualification for persons to vote and to be eligible for election to the assembly was based on property ownership since the establishment of the parliament. It remained so until 1959.

Only white British male freeholders who were twenty-one or older could qualify to run for the House. Additionally, those men had to be residing in the colony for at least three years and own property valued of at least two hundred and fifty pounds above debts and mortgages.

To qualify to vote you had to be a white British male at twenty-one years old who had resided in the Bahamas for at least twelve months and owned property above the value of or paid rentals above the value of two pounds eighty-five.

In 1807, the same year that the Slave Trade was abolished, the House passed the following legislation.

“A Bill to rectify a mistake in the Act for regulating elections and qualifications of members of the Assembly.”

The legislation which technically permitted free people of colour to vote, really did not expansively broaden the franchise. Firstly, the property qualifications remained in place and, secondly, in order for any free person of colour to take advantage of the legislation, they were required to petition the assembly. Petitions were heard on a case-by-case basis and petitioners were often held in suspicion and ridiculed by both black and white persons which made the process very daunting.

In 1830 an Act to Consolidate the several Acts for regulating elections and the qualification of members of the General Assembly was passed. The Act extended the franchise to free men of colour. There was indeed a real distinction in law between those who were considered coloured and those who were black.

Bahamian non-white persons were divided into five categories. For this letter I will mention only two categories. Negro or Blacks were the offspring of parents of pure Negro ancestry. Mulatto was the offspring of a white person and a Negro. The term Mulatto is used interchangeably with men of colour or coloured.

Even though the free coloured men were thankful for the granting of this major civil rights, they were still not satisfied. The law had left in place the property qualifications and had even made those qualifications for people of colour even more draconian. It fixed the property qualifications for white people to vote at 50 pounds while it increased the property qualifications for men of colour to 200 pounds or 50 acres under cultivation or improvement.

In 1833 an Act to relieve His Majesty’s Free Coloured and Black subjects of the Bahama Islands from all Civil Disabilities was passed. The enactment of this piece of legislation finally extended the franchise to black men and put men of colour on equal footing as white men. In the elections which followed in 1834, three men of colour were elected: Stephen Dillet, John P Dean and Thomas Minns.

In the later part of the nineteenth century the Friendly Societies took up the fight for civil and political changes. Even though coloured men had been elected to the House since 1834, no black men had yet been elected.

The late Paul Adderley claimed that the first black man to be elected to the House of Assembly was his great-great uncle William Campbell Adderley who was elected in 1889. He was also the President of the Bahamas Friendly Society. The Friendly Societies were very important institutions in the black and coloured communities. Their activities were formalised into the Friendly Societies Act of 1875. They were established to provide small life assurance benefits, sick and death benefits to members as well as small loans to the non-white diaspora.

But the friendly Societies also served another purpose. They served as political organisations as explained in the following speech by W C Campbell Adderley on Emancipation Day in 1888: “Gentlemen, this Society has always been considered throughout this Colony as being more than a common Burial Society, that is, it is also a political one, and I must say that we have a right to raise our voices when we consider our rights assailed as loving subjects of Her most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria.”

On February 28th, 1877 Mr William Enoch Johnson and eleven hundred others on behalf of the Friendly Societies petitioned the House as follows:

“Great changes have occurred of such a nature as to prevent many suitable persons from offering themselves as representatives of the people, and that the repealing of the Act, so far as the pecuniary qualification of members are concerned, is desirable and necessary if the masses of the people are fairly to be represented.”

The petition was rejected by the House which instead, increased the amounts of money it would take for people of colour to vote in or run for elections.

In the early and mid-19th Century the struggle for civil and political rights were taken up by men such as R M Bailey, C C Sweeting, S C McPherson, Dr C R Walker, Kendal Isaacs, Cleveland Eneas, Maxwell Taylor and Milo B Butler.

Eventually the struggle was taken up and led by the PLP which had formed itself into a political party in 1953 and the Women’s’ Suffrage Movement. The contribution by this Movement will be detailed in a separate letter.

On July 13th, 1959 a new General Assembly Elections Act was passed which finally removed the property qualifications in order for men to vote. Of course, universal adult suffrage did not pass in the House until 1961.

The relentless push and struggle for progressive changes in the electoral system started with the agitation of free men of colour in the nineteenth century. It continued with the thrust for the implementation of the secret ballot in 1949. The reluctance and intransigence of the ruling elite to effect electoral reform was evident by the numerous times that the General Assembly Elections Act had to be amended. They insisted through their words and deeds that their right and entitlement to political power be protected at all cost. The reforms had to be extracted piecemeal and incrementally often at the urging of the Royal Governor and at the insistence of progressives.

MAURICE TYNES

Nassau,

April 25, 2023.