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GOVERNMENT senator Tom Tavares- Finson wants the names of National Heroes Marcus Garvey, Paul Bogle, George William Gordon and Sam Sharpe to be expunged from Jamaica’s criminal records. In his contribution to the State of the Nation Debate in the Senate, Tavares- Finson said that the four National Heroes were worthy of having their names cleared. “The acts they committed were not criminal acts.
The acts were of liberation, with abundant moral justification,” Tavares-Finson said. Of Jamaica’s seven National Heroes, history recounts four of them to be criminals - accused, tried and convicted of a criminal offence. Garvey, Jamaica’s first National Hero, was convicted in Jamaica for sedition and imprisoned at the St Catherine Adult Correctional Centre for three months.
United States officials, who disapproved of Garvey for spreading the idea of black love and unity, imprisoned him for mail fraud and then deported him. Garvey was born in St Ann’s Bay on August 17, 1887. In 2006, then Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller supported the St Ann Homecoming Committee’s aim to have Garvey’s name expunged from records in the US. In his submission, Tavares-Finson said that checks with King’s House revealed that no pardon had ever been sought or offered to Garvey and the three other National Heroes who died as criminals.
The senator said that he had already consulted with academics and descendants of the heroes and would soon move a motion in the Senate for the issue to be considered. Bogle, Gordon and Sharpe all died on the gallows in the cause of freedom. Bogle, a Baptist deacon, was tried and executed for his lead role in the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865. Gordon was hanged for his role in the rebellion.
Sharpe was the main instigator of the 1831 slave rebellion which began on the Kensington Estate in St James, and which was instrumental in bringing about the abolition of slavery. Sharpe was hanged in 1832. In 1834, the Abolition Bill was passed by the British Parliament and in 1838, slavery was abolished. Culled fom Jamaica-Gleaner. |
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