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“You Can’t Eat Dignity”: Race and Labor in the British Caribbean

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Base Colonies in the Western Hemisphere, 1940–1967

Part of the book series: Studies of the Americas ((STAM))

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Abstract

Journalist Joseph M. Jones claimed in the February 1944 issue of Fortune Magazine that pro-American feeling in the British Caribbean had dwindled over the course of the war. The goodwill generated by the creation of thousands of jobs on the U.S. bases had been largely squandered, he argued—a victim of Jim Crow racism. To illustrate his point, Jones cited the story of a West Indian man who was asked how he liked working for the British compared to the Americans. “Well,” the man replied, “the British gives you 50 cents and calls you mister; the American gives you a dollar and a half and calls you ‘Hey, George.’” The inhabitants of the Caribbean base colonies, like the man in the story, Jones concluded: chose dignity over dollars.

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Notes

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  137. While the bases employed 23,000 in July 1942, that number had declined to 11,000 by March 1943. Building the Navy’s Bases in World War II: History of the Bureau of Y’ards and Docks ad the Civil Engineering Corps, 1940–46, Volume 2 (Washington, DC: Government Printing, 1947).

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  141. Ibid.

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  144. He suggested that there were few “pure” whites in the region and that legal Jim Crow did not exist. “Exclusive clubs and hotels discriminate, but they do so cautiously.” W. Adolphe Roberts, “Caribbean Headaches,” The Nation (September 20, 1941).

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  147. There had been Caribbean-wide meetings of trade unions in 1926 and 1938 held in British Guiana. Another was held in 1944. O. Nigel Bolland, On the March, 2; Bolland, The Politics of Labour in the British Caribbean, 477. Attending from Antigua were Harold Wilson (editor of Antiguan Magnet), Cornwall Bird (President of Antiguan Trade and Labour Union [ATLU]), and J. Olivier Davis (ATLU); from St. Lucia was C. Augustin (President General of the St. Lucia Workers Cooperative Union), in attendance from Jamaica were Richard Hart (Jamaican Government Railway Employees Union/executive of People’s National Party); from Grenada, from St. Vincent, from Barbados, from Surinam, from St. Kitts; from Trinidad were Vivian Henry (Trinidad Labour Party), A. Gomes (MLC, Federated Workers Union), D Mahon (FWU), R. Mentor (General Secretary of the Oilfield Workers’ Union; General Secretary of Trade Union Council of Trinidad and Tobago); from British Guiana were H. Critchlow (MLC, General Secretary of British Guiana Labour Union), T. Lee (MLC) and A. A. Thorne (MLC); and from Bermuda was Dr. Edgar F. Gordon (President of the Bermuda Workers Association). File: Secret Caribbean Labor Conference of 1945. Box 3. RG 84. Port of Spain (Trinidad, BWI) Consulate. NARA.

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  149. Quoted in Blanshard, Democracy and Empire in the Caribbean, 126.

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© 2009 Steven High

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High, S. (2009). “You Can’t Eat Dignity”: Race and Labor in the British Caribbean. In: Base Colonies in the Western Hemisphere, 1940–1967. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230618046_5

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