As the nation celebrated its second Majority Rule Day holiday, Carlton Francis Primary School students were reminded of the importance of why they can celebrate the day, and to always be mindful of the people that made the sacrifice for Bahamians of color to achieve what they achieved, what they are achieving and what they will achieve by former member of parliament and former senator, Ruby Ann Darling, the first woman to register to vote in The Bahamas.
While the students performed a reenactment of what they learned about January 10, 1967 and the events surrounding it, Darling who lived through that era spoke to the students of having to live through a period when people like themselves couldn't go certain places and had to leave school by a certain age, and of parents being servants and slaves and having to scrub floors and use a scrub board.
"Only if you had a reason to be on Bay Street could you be there," she told the students. "And there were places of entertainment, and restaurants that you could not go to. There were churches where you could not sit in the same pew as others ... you had to sit where there was a sign for you. There was rank discrimination throughout as well as segregation. There were schools you could not go to. And at the age of 14 you had to leave school."
Darling said that people should always be mindful of their "birthday" -- the day they were set free, and chains of bondage fell from their wrists, their legs, their minds, and their aspirations.
"For all Bahamians, Majority Rule Day should be a day of utter thanksgiving to God for where he has brought us, and we are now able to advance as our minds would have us to be," she said.
Darling who holds the distinction of being the first woman to register to vote in The Bahamas said to the Primary School children that Majority Rule Day should be important to them and that they should always be mindful, appreciative and aspire to greatness so that The Bahamas will be a great nation, and those who come after them would also give thanks and praise to God for those who were before them, and upheld faith and values.
On January 10, 1967, the will of the majority of Bahamians was expressed in a general election in which adult citizens could vote to determine who would govern the country.
Majority Rule Day memorializes what was in a sense, a second Emancipation -- that was the day when people of African descent who made up the majority of the population were enabled for the first time to form the government. Slavery had been abolished in 1834 and men of color had sat in the House of Assembly since the 19th century. But the majority still suffered from political, social and economic discrimination, and a blatantly unfair electoral system that prevented them from achieving true representation in the House of Assembly.
In 1833, Stephen Dillet became the first man of color to be elected in the House of Assembly. From that time up until the 1950s there was only a handful of representatives of African descent in the House of Assembly.
The first signs of mass social and political unrest and rebellion against the system came in 1942 when the Burma Road Riot erupted over a wage dispute at the construction site of what is now the Lynden Pindling International Airport (formerly Windsor Field).
Among the important events to remember after the Burma Road Riot are the formation of the Citizens Committee in 1950 which reversed the ban on the showing of Sidney Poitier's film "No Way Out"; the formation of the first national political party, the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) in 1953; the election of the first organized political party, the PLP to the House of Assembly in 1956 with Lynden Pindling as leader; Sir Etienne Dupuch's anti-discrimination resolution in the House of Assembly in 1956 which was the catalyst for dismantling racial segregation in places; the General Strike of 1957 led by Sir Clifford Darling and Sir Randol Fawkes; women voting for the first time in 1962 following a suffrage campaign led by Mary Ingraham, Eugenia Lockhart, Georgiana Symonette and Dr. Doris Johnson; Black Tuesday, April 27, 1965, when Lynden Pindling, Leader of the Opposition, threw the Speaker's mace out of the window to protest the way constituency boundaries were drawn; a boycott of the House by the PLP in that same year; and the presentation of a petition to the United Nations Committee on Decolonization in New York by a delegation led by Pindling.
Prior to 1967, appeals to the Imperial Government in London, brought about limited reform, including a new constitution in 1964, which ushered in Cabinet Government for the first time. It was under that constitution that the general election was fought in 1967. Election was held against the loss in 1962 when the PLP polled more votes than the governing UPB, but lost the general election because the ruling group had given more seats to the Family Islands, although most of the population lived on New Providence.
On the evening of January 10, 1967, the results showed a tie between the two political parties -- 18 for the PLP under Pindling and 18 for the UBP under Sir Roland Symonette. Randol Fawkes who represented the Labour Party and Alvin Braynen, an independent were also elected.
Fawkes, a member of the progressive movement who ran unopposed by the PLP and Braynen, joined with the PLP to form a government, and for the first time in the history of The Bahamas, people of color had majority rule.
The victorious PLP candidates of the 1967 General Election were Pindling, Preston Albury, Clarence Bain, Milo Butler, Clifford Darling, Elwood Donaldson, Arthur Foulkes, Carlton Francis, Arthur Hanna, Warren Levarity, Curtis MacMillan, Uriah McPhee, Maurice Moore, Edmund Moxey, James Shepherd, George Thompson, Jeffrey Thompson and Cecil Wallace-Whitfield.
While the Majority Rule Day holiday is still a new celebration at only two years old, Darling said she would like to see the day, when celebrations leading up to the day take place over the course of a week.
"I want us to do more celebration, more reenactments like they did at Carlton Francis, and have more celebrations. Just as the Americans become excited about Thanksgiving Day, I would like to see preparations be done in advance leading up to January 10, so there will be a cultural and historic awareness," said Darling.

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