| If you are planning to take a vacation in Jamaica, you | | | | rights and political enfranchisement. |
| should look into the various all inclusive packages, | | | | While the Morant Bay Rebellion has been associated |
| honeymoon packages and the beach house villas. You | | | | with Paul Bogle and George William Gordon, women |
| should also familiarize yourself with Jamaican politics | | | | also played crucial roles, for example organising many |
| and history, as they will play a bigger role that you | | | | of Paul Bogle's meetings. |
| think on your Jamaican vacation. Both men and | | | | One Caroline Grant was referred to by a police |
| women created the culture of open rebellion that | | | | officer at Morant Bay as 'a queen of the rebels', while |
| characterized the slavery world, and helped propel | | | | Grant and Sarah Johnson ordered fleeing men to |
| the movement towards emancipation and full | | | | return to the scene of action. Elizabeth Taylor even |
| freedom. | | | | beat Joseph Williams when he tried to run away. |
| In the 1831 'Christmas Rebellion' intimately associated | | | | Additionally, as Clinton Hutton tells us, women like |
| with one of its outstanding leaders, Sam Sharpe, | | | | Caroline Grant, Sarah Johnson and Ann Thompson |
| women's roles have been recorded by contemporary | | | | raided police stations for guns and ammunition; and |
| observers. | | | | Elizabeth Taylor mobilized support for the cause. |
| This rebellion erupted in St James. The main cause | | | | Radical women joined their male colleagues in the |
| was enslaved people's belief that they were to be | | | | decolonization movement that intensified after 1865. |
| 'freed at Christmas ...and that their freedom order | | | | For after the brutal suppression of the Morant Bay |
| had actually come out of England but was being | | | | Rebellion, the state reacted by removing the elective |
| withheld and that they only had to strike en masse, | | | | principle in government and installing the Crown |
| and they should gain their object'. Enslaved men and | | | | Colony system of government. |
| women from pens and plantations in Trelawny and St | | | | The ruling elite believed that the potential for radical |
| James had apparently agreed that any attempt to | | | | transformation would be considerably diminished once |
| force them back to work after the Christmas | | | | measures to curb the freedom of African-Caribbeans |
| holidays was to be met by setting fire to the | | | | by retaining control of the government were |
| properties, (though not their huts and provision | | | | effected. However, despite their optimism, protest |
| grounds). | | | | action, far from decreasing, escalated after 1865. |
| The inequities of post-slavery Jamaican society | | | | In one sense, Caribbean rebel women sacrificed their |
| ensured that the descendants of enslaved peoples | | | | own feminist concerns initially in solidarity with their |
| would continue the struggle for complete | | | | male counterparts during the height of the |
| emancipation; emancipation not just as an event, but | | | | decolonisation movement. |
| also as a condition of human progress. Protest action, | | | | Despite the association of the Caribbean labour |
| the most notable being the 1865 Morant Bay | | | | movement of the 1930s, the franchise movement of |
| Rebellion, was widespread in the post-1838 period | | | | the 1940s and the independence struggles of the |
| and was attributable to the failure of post-slavery | | | | 1960s with men like Alexander Bustamante and |
| regimes to deliver on the promise of freedom by | | | | Norman Manley, women were very much involved. |
| honouring freed people's claims to citizenship, civil | | | | |