1. Nicole Plummer, Steffon Campbell
UNTOLD STORIES: USING ORAL HISTORY TO EXPLORE THE CORAL GARDENS ‘INCIDENT’ AS A CONTINUATION OF THE SELF LIBERATING ETHOS OF THE JAMAICAN PEOPLE
Nicole Plummer, Steffon Campbell

2. Introduction
This paper discusses the use of Oral History in exploring the Coral Gardens ‘Incident’ and its links to the continued struggle for identity and freedom of expression amongst the Jamaican people.
This paper divided into three sections:
The concept and practice of oral history;
The use of oral history in illuminating the self- liberating ethos of the Afro-Jamaican people in the pre-colonial period;
The plight of Rastas and Coral Gardens ‘Incident’ through eye-witness statements.

3. SECTION 1 – WHAT IS ORAL HISTORY?
Historical sources can be:
written – books, engravings on stone, papyrus or parchment
Unwritten – material objects (clothes, accessories, etc.); non-material objects (oral sources)
Oral sources are divided into:
Oral tradition – myths, folk tales, stories
Oral history – eye witness accounts of an event

4. SECTION 1 – WHAT IS ORAL HISTORY? Ctd.
Key elements of oral history therefore include:
An interviewer
The interviewee and the memories of the interviewee
A recording device
Transcription of an interview.

5. THE USE OF ORAL HISTORY IN ILLUMINATING THE SELF-LIBERATING ETHOS OF THE JAMAICAN PEOPLE IN THE PRECOLONIAL PERIOD – The Baptist War, 1831
Ventriloquised statements: Oral testimonies were often recorded for the enslaved by Europeans
In examining the ‘slave testimonies’ of the Emancipation War the following become obvious:
Organisation and planning
The psyche and motive of Sharpe’s followers

6. THE USE OF ORAL HISTORY IN ILLUMINATING THE SELF-LIBERATING ETHOS OF THE JAMAICAN PEOPLE IN THE PRECOLONIAL PERIOD – The Morant Bay Rebellion, 1865
The records of the court martial reveal:
The planning
Motive

7. ORAL HISTORY AND THE CORAL GARDENS ‘INCIDENT’
The use of oral testimony acts as a corrective to many of the written newspaper and even police reports after the events in Coral Gardens 1963.
Professor Barry Chevannes in Rastafari: Roots and Ideology linked Rastafari to a history of marronage and pitched battles against enslavement and inequality.

8. ORAL HISTORY AND THE CORAL GARDENS ‘INCIDENT’, ctd.
To counter the abased position of the people of African descent, Garvey believed that the black man in Africa. Black people had to help themselves; they must sever ties from a white world that made them its inferior.
The crowning of Emperor Ras Tafari as Haile Selassie of Ethiopia in 1933 struck a chord with Afro-Jamaicans.

9. Haile Selassie
Marcus Garvey

10. ORAL HISTORY AND THE CORAL GARDENS ‘INCIDENT’, ctd.
On Holy Thursday, April 11, 1963, a group identifying themselves as Rastafari attacked a gas station at Coral Gardens. During this attack, a gas station attendant was killed and the station set on fire. Afterwards, they attacked a motel and killed a local guest and retreated to nearby hills where the house of an unpopular overseer was attacked. In the end, eight persons were killed. The response of the state to the Coral Gardens ‘Incident’ was swift and bloody.

11. ORAL HISTORY AND THE CORAL GARDENS ‘INCIDENT’, ctd.

12. ORAL HISTORY AND THE CORAL GARDENS ‘INCIDENT’, ctd.

13. ORAL HISTORY AND THE CORAL GARDENS ‘INCIDENT’, ctd.
Power discourse vs. subaltern voices; Discourse and counter discourse
Causes and Objectives/Misunderstanding and miscommunication – refusal to dialogue
Spirituality of fight: Tacky and Myal; Sam Sharpe and Native Baptist, Rasta ideology
Oligarchy and Majoritarianism
Retaliation: colonial vs. anti-colonial - themes of power

14. Conclusion
Rastafari was in keeping with a legacy of protest and assertion of people of African descent to decency and respect.
The Coral Gardens ‘Incident’ demonstrated that though independent, challenges to the status quo were intolerable.
Response of the state demonstrated that Jamaica was more like segregated Alabama, than a free Jamaica led by people of colour.