Reflections on fifty-six years (and nine days) ago

Feb 25, 2018 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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By Dennis Nichols

Two Fridays ago, I was among a group of downtowners huddled in shelter from the rain at the entrance to Demico House in Stabroek Square. Then an old-timer casually mentioned something that startled me. It was uncanny, for what he said was very close to what I had been thinking five minutes earlier.
The dark skies, he said, reminded him of a dark day 60 years ago. “Dey call it Black Friday” he drawled. “Business  place bu’n down, Water Street, North Road, Regent Street; Camp Street … Jagan an’ Burnham war…” I listened, and thought of correcting him; he had the day right, but I knew the year was 1962, and that was 56 years ago. I didn’t say anything though. He went on to say that all the buildings at the northern side of the Stabroek Square were destroyed, and ‘you could see Sandbach Parker clear, clear.”
A younger man said he’d heard of the day from the old people, how ‘man run wid fridge and stove’ referring to the looting that took place as police and firemen were distracted by the raging fires that day.
As their words drifted across to me, the memories began to stir more strongly. February 16, 1962 marked my 9^th birthday and as I had written before, it was a baptism of fire, fear, and awe. The angst was captured and refined through the words of a man who would become the voice of our nation’s soul – Martin Carter, who wrote about that February afternoon “… the sun and the streets exploded … a day that had to come, ever since the whole of a morning sky glowed red like glory, over the tops of houses.” It flashed cross my mind that had it been as rainy as it was that day, the magnitude of the tragedy could have been greatly diminished, or the tragedy itself averted.
Obviously, Black Friday 1962 didn’t occur in a vacuum. It was preceded and given shape by events in the fifties and maybe even earlier; and tied to the perception of political movers and shakers far from these shores.  But in my lifetime it was first the suspension of our young constitution in 1953, due at least in part to the communist threat that was perceived to emanate from local leaders in the shape of the People’s Progressive Party.
The second was two years later when Forbes Burnham separated and distanced himself from the party, after which followers split along racial lines and suspicions deepened about racial bias. British and American ‘interests’ must have looked on in bemusement.
Black Friday 1962 is fact, and it’s history. It was the first manifestation that I can recall, of what may be termed ‘the troubles’ long before the post-2002 crime wave given the same caption. Precisely what provoked it is something than can be debated still, and for years to come. Some precipitators seem easy to understand – the so-called Kaldor budget, the perceived racial rift, and more specifically the rumour that a child had been killed by teargas earlier that day. Together with the fact that there was a colonial government during this period, the presence of British troops nearby, and a strike threat helped create our own ‘perfect storm’ that day.
In the space of a few hours dozens of buildings, mostly business places, were razed, at least two citizens killed, and many others injured. The fires burned and then smouldered long into the night as Governor Sir Richard Luyt called for calm and assured the populace that troops from the motherland were restoring peace and order.
Earlier, my father, choosing prudence over penitence, had evacuated his family from our house on Princes Street as the fires appeared to be heading in our direction. We spent the night with relatives in a tiny West Ruimveldt ‘scheme’ house which held about 20 traumatised souls. Before we left our Charlestown residence, we had seen some of the people the young man referred to, in the first paragraph, running along both Camp and Princes Streets toting various household articles including a fridge, radiograms, (the older folk will know what these were) and bolts of cloth.
Someone tossed a few articles in our yard, but my father would not allow any of us to leave the house  to retrieve ‘souvenirs’ that day; in any case the tear gas canisters thrown by the police would probably have been enough of a deterrent. By late afternoon my initial fear had subsided and was replaced to some extent by the kind of thrill some may experience while being absorbed in watching an action-filled movie. But this was no fantasy, even though the red night sky did look like something out of a sci-fi, end-times film.
Two Fridays ago, as I stood gazing out from Demico, the events of that other Friday more than five decades ago flooded my mind. They stuck for a while, but then I pushed them out with earlier memories of how the Stabroek Square looked in the late fifties and earlier sixties when my father and I commuted weekly between Georgetown and Highdam, 30 miles away on the East Coast of Demerara.
I remembered the blue buses parked in front of Big Market that plied that route – British Commander, Hamlet, Mahatma G., and Luxury Liner. I remembered the approximately two-hour journey along the dusty, red-earth road, past the villages established by our African and East Indian ancestors,  past the groves of coconut trees and mud-daubed bottom house yards from which emanated the smells of curry and copra; and I thought how beautiful and how innocent everything seemed then.
I thought of the windswept, sun-drenched openness of Highdam – the gas lamps, the mosquitoes and smoke pots, the moonlit nights; and contrasted them with the exhilaration of exploring our newly-acquired house in Georgetown with its electric lights and flush toilet.
Each locale had its charms, and even their contrasts were somehow complementary. My new friends in the capital were not that different from my Black, East Indian, and Mixed-race school and village friends in Highdam, and because I actually lived in both areas, one was simply an extension of the other. Then came race; then came politics; then came fear; then came February 16, 1962.
Fifty -six years later those first three ‘comrades’ still pop up like evil jack-in-the-box imps, and weave their spells of suspicion and separation on us. It’s the sad and sobering reality.
I became an official ‘government-designated’ senior citizen nine days ago. My ninth birthday, so long past, feels like ancient history. But it’s not, and whenever February 16 lands on a Friday, I’m reminded of the possibility of its recurrence. It wouldn’t take much to transpose that day plumb into 2018, or into the next few years. Beware of race, politics, and fear. Remember Black Friday!

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