About Us

Grenada - Sir Eric Matthew Gairy (1920 - 1997)

He was born in St. Andrew's Parish, near Grenville, Grenada. He founded the Grenada United Labor Party in 1950, which began as a labor union but later took part in elections, and served as Chief Minister from 1954 to 1960 and from 1961 until 1962 when he was dismissed for corruption. He served as Premier between 1967 and 1974, and became the first Prime Minister of Grenada from 1974. He led his country to Independence from Britain in 1974. Gairy's term in office coincided with civil strife in Grenada. The political environment was highly charged and although Gairy won a general election in 1976, the opposition did not accept the result as legitimate. The civil strife took the form of street violence between government supporters including the Mongoose gangs and gangs organized by the New Jewel Movement. In the late 1970s, the NJM began planning to overthrow the government. Party members began to receive military training outside of Grenada. On March 13th 1979 while Gairy was out of the country, the New Jewel Movement under Maurice Bishop launched an armed revolution and overthrew the government. Bishop suspended the constitution and the New Jewel Movement ruled the country by decree until 1983. Gairy stayed in exile in the United States until 1983, when the United States, backed by some Caribbean allies - notably, Dame Eugenia Charles, then-Prime Minister of Dominica - invaded to topple a government which had overthrown and killed Bishop. Gairy then returned to Grenada and campaigned in the elections of 1984, claiming to be a changed man. However, his party lost the elections, and attempts by Gairy and his party to return to power in 1990 and 1995 were also unsuccessful. He died in Grand Anse, Grenada in 1997.

Jamaica - Mortimer St. George Planno (Born 6 September 1929 - Died 5 March 2006)

Mortimer Planno was a spiritual leader and one of the most revered figures of the Rastafari movement. Crucial to the early development and propagation of the faith in Jamaica and acknowledged as the man that indoctrinated Bob Marley, Planno was also admired for his oratory and literary skills. The youngest of four children born in Cuba to a local tobacconist and his Jamaican wife, Planno spent most of his life in the slums of western Kingston, where his mother moved the family in the early 1930s, just as the Rastafari movement began its initial stirrings. The faith sprang up in Jamaica after preachers interpreted a statement attributed to Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican radical who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, as being prophetic; in 1927, Garvey is said to have proclaimed, "Look to Africa, for the crowning of a black king, he shall be the redeemer." So when Ras Tafari Makonen was crowned Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia in 1930 - taking the title of Negusa Negast: the Elect of God, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah - the downtrodden of Jamaica took note and emerging religious leaders began to galvanize support for a new faith centered on Selassie's divinity, proclaiming that God was black and that the rightful place for black Jamaicans was Africa. Planno's articulate rhetoric saw him become one of the movement's most prominent leaders during the 1950s. He was a founding member of the Rastafari Movement Association, which established Local Charter 37 of the Ethiopian World Federation on Salt Lane, in the heart of one of Kingston's most notorious ghettos; and he instigated the first "Universal Grounation of the Rastafari", a drumming and chanting ceremony held in the slum of Back-O-Wall in March 1958. Then, after repeated harassment by the authorities and ostracism by the Christian public, Planno and his colleagues approached the University College of the West Indies to request an official study of the movement, in an effort to establish a better relationship with the wider Jamaican society. The in-depth study led to Planno and nine other prominent Rastas' being sent on a "fact-finding mission" to Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and other African countries in 1961. During the trip, Planno met Selassie in person in Ethiopia. Five years later, when Selassie made an official state visit to Jamaica, Planno was instrumental in calming the crowd that gathered at the airport, allowing Selassie officially to greet the bulk of his followers for the only time in history. During the late 1960s, Planno gave religious instruction at his home on a government housing scheme in Trench Town. Bob Marley and the Wailers, who lived nearby, were some of his most noteworthy students. Planno even briefly managed the group - producing their obscure single "Selassie is the Chapel" in 1968. He was later involved in the One Love Peace Concert, an event headlined by Marley in 1978. From the late 1990s, Planno was attached to the University of the West Indies as a resident "Folk Philosopher".