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| Dr. J. Robert Love: clergyman, doctor, politician, author, journalist, patriot. |
Joseph Robert Love was born in Nassau, Bahamas, in either 1835 or 1839, of pure African ancestry. He grew up in Grant's Town,
in the community of St. Agnes' Anglican Church. From the late 1860s until 1881 he lived in the United States, where he was
ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church in 1871, and priest in 1877. In 1880 he graduated as a doctor from the Medical Department
of the University of Buffalo, probably the school's first Black graduate. From 1881 to 1890 Love was based in Port-au-Prince
where he worked as an Episcopal missionary and doctor, and latterly became deeply involved in Haitian politics.
Robert Love in Jamaica
In 1890 Robert Love settled in Kingston, as a refugee from extreme political danger in Haiti. While at first he hoped to return
to Haiti, he gradually became more and more involved in Jamaican politics. From 1894 to 1905 he edited the weekly paper the
Jamaica Advocate as the voice of Black Jamaicans; he worked for the election of Black candidates to the Legislative Council
(Alexander Dixon was the first in 1899); he was elected to the Kingston City Council, and in 1906 to the Legislative Council;
he established the 'People's Convention' in 1898 to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of 'Full Freedom', and it met annually
until 1903. He was the most significant figure in Jamaican politics between 1890 and 1910. He established a great reputation
as a public speaker and was involved in almost all major public events and activities in the period. He died in November 1914,
still active as a member of the St Andrew Parochial Board until a month before his death. Marcus Garvey acknowledged his debt
to the ideas of Robert Love.
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Click on the photo above
to see
the first page of a web site
on
Robert Love which I hope
to
work on this summer.
Bookmark the URL and
check back from time to
time to see if I am
making any progress!
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Note re use of terms: In Jamaica at the period during
which the people shown on this site were living it was usual to describe people who were, or appeared to be, of pure African
ancestry as Black; those of mixed 'ethnic/racial' ancestry as Coloured; those who were apparently of European ancestry
as White ( qualified as 'Jamaican White' if their ancestry was probably not entirely European). Also in the population there
were Jews, 'East Indians' from India (not Indonesia), Syrians/Lebanese and Chinese.
One of the problems
of research in this period is that of identifying the 'ethnicity/racial origins' of people mentioned in the sources; then
it was not considered polite or proper to mention colour or 'race' in most public situations; surnames are also of little
help as, for instance, a person with the surname 'Williams' could be equally well English, Welsh, African, Chinese or Indian
in origin, and surnames which were clearly Jewish in origin could also belong to Black, White and Coloured Jamaicans.
Robert
Love was a great help in this regard as he used colour terms, especially Black and White, without any inhibitions, since
he wanted people to be proud of their colour. The other factor that helped with identification of 'ethnic/racial origins'
was the increasing use of photographs in the press as the first decade of the 20th century progressed.
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Further
information on Dr J Robert Love can be found in Six Great Jamaicans by Adolphe Roberts; my thesis on Love - Robert
Love and Jamaican Politics - is at present only available at the Libraries of the University of the West Indies. You
can e-mail for help in accessing the thesis, which I hope to put on the web some time in the future. J.L.
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