On February 10, 2026, the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) gathered at National Heroes Park to honour the 115th anniversary […]
Long before global audiences associated Black excellence at Wimbledon with Arthur Ashe or Althea Gibson, a Jamaican quietly rewrote sporting history. His name was Bertrand Milbourne Clark—a civil servant by profession, a sporting polymath by passion, and the first Black person ever to compete at the Wimbledon Championships.
Born on 29 April 1894 in Kingston, Jamaica, Clark emerged from a family rooted in education and professional life. His father, Enos Edgar Clark, was a dentist, and the family belonged to a small but influential Black middle class navigating opportunity and restriction within colonial Jamaica. Educated at Kingston High School and later Jamaica College, Clark’s athletic talent surfaced early. In 1910, while still a student, he won the high jump at the very first Inter-Secondary Schools Championship Sports at Sabina Park, signaling the breadth of ability that would define his life.
A Literary Life That Gave Jamaican Children Their Own Voice Born on January 13, 1937, in St Andrew, Jean D’Costa
Jamaica is often praised for its national motto: Out of Many, One People. This phrase doesn’t merely echo patriotic sentiment — it encapsulates the nation’s deep and complex multicultural identity. As of 2024, Jamaica’s demographic makeup is approximately 76.3% of African descent, 15.1% Afro-European (mixed), 3.4% East Indian and Afro-East Indian, 3.2% Caucasian (White), 1.2% Chinese, and 0.8% Other. Among these groups, Indo-Jamaicans — descendants of Indian indentured labourers and later migrants — represent the largest ethnic minority in the country, critical in Jamaican culture.
Jamaica’s African heritage is not accidental—it is the result of centuries of calculated, systemic exploitation known as the transatlantic slave trade. This wasn’t a tragedy that “just happened.” It was a deliberate global enterprise, engineered by powerful economic and political forces, and supported by local African collaborators, European elites, and colonial administrators alike.
To understand why enslaved Africans were brought to Jamaica and who allowed it to happen, we must pull back the curtain on a vast, brutal machinery that turned human lives into currency, empires into superpowers, and Africa into a bleeding continent.
