Edgar Fitzgerald Gordon (20 March 1895 – 20 April 1955), born in Trinidad and Tobago, was a physician, parliamentarian, civil-rights activistRosemary Jones, Bermuda: Five Centuries, Chapter 18: Growing Pains, Ministry of Education, Bermuda, 2011. and labour leader in Bermuda, and is regarded as the "father of trade unionism" there:"Our history", website of Bermuda Public Services Union – BPSU. According to Bermuda Biographies, "He championed the cause of Bermudian workers and fought for equal rights for black Bermudians, thereby laying the groundwork for much of the political and social change that came about after his death".Meredith Ebbin, "Dr. Edgar Fitzgerald Gordon, March 20,1895 – April 20, 1955 – Physician, parliamentarian and labour leader", Bermuda Biographies. He was president of the Bermuda Industrial Union (BIU) 1945–55.Bermuda Industrial Union website. Gordon has been described as "perhaps the only black charismatic leader to have emerged in the island's modern political history",Frances Henry (ed.), Ethnicity in the Americas, Walter de Gruyter, 1976, p. 67. and as "Bermuda's most dedicated Pan-Africanist".Ira Philip, "The unforgettable day I met the Queen", The Royal Gazette, 7 September 2015.
In 2011, Gordon was honoured as a National Hero of Bermuda. Other posthumous honours he has been accorded include the Peace & Social Justice Award 2016 from the Catholic Church of Bermuda."Peace & Social Justice Award: Dr. E. F. Gordon", Bernews, 24 October 2016.
Early years and education
Edgar Fitzgerald Gordon was born to Olympia Jardin and Frederick Charles Gordon in Port of Spain where he received his early education at Queen's Royal College (QRC),Tony Martin, The Progress of the African Race Since Emancipation and Prospects for the Future, The Majority Press, 1998, p. 8. graduating as one of the school's most brilliant scholars.Ira Philip, "Remembering Mazumbo, a dynamic freedom fighter", The Royal Gazette, 21 March 2015.
In 1912, he went to Scotland to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh (also becoming involved with the Afro-West Indian Society and pan-African politics).Henry Mitchell, "When 'the world came to Scotland': student radicals at Edinburgh University, 1906–1946", Scottish Critical Heritage, 22 March 2018. There he met and married a fellow medical student, Clara Christian (who had previously studied music in the US at Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia, and Oberlin College, Ohio, and who was the first black woman to study at the University of Edinburgh)."Dr EF Gordon – fought tirelessly for equal rights for black Bermudians", The Royal Gazette, 16 June 2011. To the displeasure of her father George James Christian, a Dominican barrister who had settled in the Gold Coast in 1902,"George James Christian: Pioneer in Africa", TheDominican.net, Volume No. 1, Issue No. 32, 27 November 2002. she abandoned her medical studies to begin a family with Gordon."Moira Stuart", Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine."Moira Stuart | Season 1 Episode 6 | Full Episode | Who Do You Think You Are", Who Do You Think You Are | Full Episodes, via YouTube.
Medical career
Qualifying as a doctor at the age of 23 in 1918, Gordon was for some time a medical practitioner in the small Scottish town of Kingussie."Moira Stuart", Past Stories – Who Do You Think You Are?, BBC One. In 1921, he returned to the Caribbean with his wife Clara and young family. He briefly worked in Trinidad, then went on to become chief medical supervisor in Dominica.
Move to Bermuda In 1924, Gordon went to Bermuda, where he set up a busy medical practice on Heathcote Hill in Somerset. According to biographer Ira Philip, Gordon "was brought to Bermuda by Sandys businessman William Robinson to fill a void caused by the death of black Dr Arnold Packwood. The all white local medical board was embarrassed when Dr Gordon passed what he termed was an impossible examination which he contended was calculated to fail him."Ira Philip, "Dr Olivia Tucker — pioneering pharmacist denied the opportunity to work in her homeland", The Royal Gazette, 8 March 2013.
Gordon began to take up the cause of black nurses and the discrimination they faced in employment in Bermuda, writing a series of letters, dating from 1929, to the editor of The Royal Gazette, criticising the refusal of the Bermuda Welfare Society to hire Blacks as district nurses. After decades of lobbying, the first black district nurse to be hired was Leonie Harford in 1963.
Political life
After standing unsuccessfully for Parliament in 1933 and 1943,Eva N. Hodgson, Second Class Citizens; First Class Men, 2nd edition, Bermuda: The Writers Machine, 1988, p. 67. Gordon won a seat in St George's in 1946.
Name change On 22 June 1947,Mazumbo: 100 Facts and Quotes by Dr. E. F. Gordon, Writers' Machine, 1994, pp. 14, 33. in protest at that his fellow parliamentarians persistently refused to address him by his correct title, and that a Bermuda newspaper, the Mid-Ocean News, prefixed "Mr" to the names of white members of Bermuda's Parliament (second oldest in the world), but called him simply Gordon,Carl Murphy, "Beautiful Bermuda | Call Him Mister", Richmond Afro American, 6 December 1947. he announced that henceforth he was to be known by the African name of Mazumbo, with no prefix. His notice to this effect in The Royal Gazette read: "I, Edgar Fitzgerald Gordon, Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery of Edinburgh University, President General of the Bermuda Industrial Union, President of the Progressive Bermuda League and Member of Parliament for St. George's, hereby declare that from henceforth I shall be known as Mazumbo." He gave as explanation: "The name Gordon, which I inherited, reminds me very painfully that some Scotsman in some other age compelled a grandmother of mine to submit to his desires. In Bermuda I am black and treated as Bermuda treats the black people.Hodgson (1988, pp. 70–71) writes: "The daily paper often underscored its contempt for coloured people by refusing to attach a title to them in any reference to them.... [Dr. Gordon's] gesture had the value of drawing the insult to the attention of many Negroes, who, from long familiarity, tended to take so many insults for granted. It was part of Dr. Gordon's overall programme of stimulating awareness on the part of the people who were so hard pressed that they had little time to think about the basis of their problems. He understood, very well, that support was gained for these political battles through starkly presented ideas and the simple statement of the injustices which the people faced in their daily lives." So I want to be called by a name that belongs to my race and requires no prefix." He was further quoted as saying that he had taken his new name from "a famous West African chieftain, who had once been received by Queen Victoria"."BERMUDA: Grandpa Was a Scotsman", 21 July 1947; cited in Time, 21 December 2011 (subscription required). This was a reference to a 19th-century Trinidadian lawyer called Emmanuel Lazare, popularly known as Mazumbo (or Mzumbo) Lazare, about whom Maureen Warner-Lewis has written: "although born in the Antilles, Lazare appropriated, or condoned the use of, an overtly African designation. The name was a symbol of his identification with black people and the poor. He was a defender of their rights, joined the Pan-African Association founded in 1901 in England by fellow Trinidadian Henry Sylvester Williams, and became a moving spirit behind democratic political reforms at the turn of the twentieth century." This characterisation of Mazumbo Lazare is additional evidence for Gordon's motivation in associating himself with the name.Maureen Warner-Lewis, Central Africa in the Caribbean: Transcending time, Transforming Cultures. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2003; p. 80.
Personality in Parliament As a Member of the Colonial Parliament (MCP), Gordon was a fiery and sometimes controversial orator. After the death in July 1948 of the Speaker of the House of Assembly Sir Reginald Conyers (who in his will left money for the Port Royal School in Hamilton, providing it was "used for the education of white children"), Gordon told a public meeting that he had only attended Conyers' funeral to "make sure he was put in the hole". According to the historian and activist Eva Hodgson, Gordon's "dramatic personality, his drive, and his unabashed theatricals had done what no one else either could do, or chose to do. He had alerted the Negro masses, he had given expression to their unvoiced despair and anger, often his words had given shape and form to emotions which they themselves could hardly define."Hodgson (1988), p. 124.
Bermuda Workers' Association (BWA) Championing the rights of black and working-class Bermudians, Gordon was asked to become president of the Bermuda Workers' Association (BWA) in 1944, which fought for trade union rights and was committed to the removal of segregation and the adoption of universal adult suffrage. Membership of the BWA had by then dwindled to 200 but under Gordon's vigorous leadership it increased to 5,000 in 1945.W. S. Zuill, The Story of Bermuda and Her People (1973), Macmillan Caribbean, 2nd revised edition 1983, p. 200. In 1946, he began his campaign to petition for social and constitutional change, and in that year the Legislature passed Bermuda's first Trade Union and Disputes Act, which was designed to curb the fledgling BWA, making it illegal for a union to have a newspaper or operate a business. Gordon took the lead in the subsequent establishment that year of the Bermuda Industrial Union (BIU),Robert J. Alexander with Eldon M. Parker, A History of Organized Labor in the English-Speaking West Indies, Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2004, pp. 101–02."From BWA to BIU" , BIU History. and the BWA for the time being continued as its political arm.
Petition to British Colonial Office During an extended visit to England from December 1946 to March 1947, Gordon presented a petition containing more than 5,000 signaturesGovernment of Bermuda website. to the British Colonial Secretary from the Bermuda Workers' Association outlining various concerns, including the limited franchise, segregation, and restricted occupational opportunities."1946 – Dr. E. F. Gordon delivers Bermuda Workers’ Association Petition to the Colonial Office in Great Britain", The Evolution of Bermuda's Franchise, compiled by James E. Smith. Parliamentary Registry."When the times they were a-changin’", The Royal Gazette, 9 September 2015. Only seven percent of the population could vote, and (as Meredith Ebbin notes) there were more votes cast than actual voters because a property owner could vote in every parish where he owned land. It was a system that gave "the monied classes a distinct and definite control over the election results", Gordon said, pointing out that while the UK and its dependencies had undertaken voting reforms, Bermuda had operated under the same system since 1620.Meredith Ebbin, "To vote or not to vote: it was not always an option", BDA Sun, 14 December 2012.