It was through these women's organizations and their international counterparts that Bahamian women gained increasing confidence to lobby for the suffrage and the further advancement of women's rights and civil rights in general. The Suffrage Movement in the Bahamas received tremendous support from its allies in the United States, Canada and England. The growing enfranchisement of women around the world provided an enabling environment for the Suffrage Movement in the Bahamas.

The specific social climate in the Bahamas in regard to women which engendered the struggle for the enfranchisement of women was described by Sir Randol Fawkes in his book, The Faith That Moved the Mountain. He states: "More than half of the adult population of the Bahamas - the women - still remained voteless. In 1958, they lagged far behind their male counterparts in the field of human rights. The chief roadblocks to full citizenship for Bahamian women were: - i) the traditional attitudes of men and women towards their respective roles in society; ii) the lack of equal education and training, vocational guidance and counselling in the school; iii) the division of the labour market into traditionally male and female sectors; and iv) lack of child-care facilities for working mothers". Sir Randol detailed other disadvantages women faced including the inheritance law of primogeniture and the inadequate maintenance laws for child support.
In its particular pursuit of the right to vote for women and its general intention to advance the status of women in the Bahamas, the Suffrage Movement established strategic alliances with the other social movements of this time. It found a strident proponent of its cause in Randol Fawkes, leader of the Bahamas Federation of Labour. The Progressive Liberal Party in its pursuit of a majority rule government supported the right to vote for women and vigorously championed the cause shortly after the bye-election of 1960.

Ilsha Mcphee
History Coursework
Question 1(A)

What role did the Women’s Suffrage Movement Play during the “Quiet Revolution” in the Bahamas?

Notable women such as Dame Doris Johnson, Mary Ingraham, Eugenia Lockhart,
Mabel Walker and Georgianna Symonette has made countless triumphs toward the equal rights of all women in the Bahamas. In particular all of these women mentioned before were major persons in the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the Bahamas. This movement’s main purpose was to ensure that all women would have a right to practice the franchise. However, this is not the only thing that resulted in the hard work of the women apart of this movement. In fact, even the amount of times you could have voted and the men’s vote was affected positively through the efforts of the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Because of the Women’s Suffrage Movement’s Positive effects on the voting of all citizens’, we can clearly see their pivotal role in the “Quiet Revolution”.

In the mid twentieth, the Bahamas was gaining strength towards independence, both indirect and direct protesting. In the elections before 1962, women, who were more than half of the adult population, did not have the right to vote. The Progressive Liberal Party Leader, Lynden Pindling, knew that the only way to majority rule was if the women of the Bahamas were given the right to vote. The entire point of the “Quiet Revolution” was to achieve majority rule and Independence, and the Women’s Suffrage Movement had everything to do with the success of not only the P. L. P., but also the Bahamas’ Progression against both gender and racial discrimination.

The first official Women’s Suffrage movement meeting took place in 1957and within the next year had put together a 3000 signature petition requesting women’s right to vote be made a law. During this time, the request for the right for all Bahamian men over twenty one to vote was made as well. Here, we can see clearly the... [continues]

Black Tuesday in the Bahamas
Tuesday 27th 1965 was a special day in the history of our Party and our country. It was the day that the late Sir Lynden Pindling, the then Leader of the Opposition and later Prime Minister threw the Speaker's mace from the east window of the House of Assembly to protest the gerrymandering boundaries by the then governing United Bahamian Party. The day is known in history as Black Tuesday. Tuesday 27th 2010 is the 45th anniversary of Black Tuesday. The demonstration appeared to be spontaneous at the time but it was not. Throwing the mace out of the window was a carefully orchestrated plan by the PLP's leaders at the time to demonstrate their position on the right to a fair and equal distribution of boundaries. The election of 10th January 1967 was fought on the boundaries set in 1965. The PLP demonstrated against the backdrop of their loss in 1962 to the UBP which came about because the number of seats in the then called Out Islands exceeded the number of seats in New Providence where the majority of the population lived. That resulted in the PLP winning the popular vote in 1962 but losing the general election because they lost the seat count. The PLP determined that with the new Constitution of the country in place, the boundaries had to be fairly drawn. The Mace as later repaired by the government from funds raised by the public. No prosecutions ensued from the event. But the event catapulted the then Leader of the Opposition Lynden Pindling into greater national prominence as a man of courage and foresight. The late Sir Milo Butler Sr. threw the Speaker's hour glass out of window as a protest against the limitation of speaking time in the House. The PLP remembers the day and pays tribute to the national heroes and heroines who joined the party in the public square such as the late Ena Hepburn and the now Mrs. Effie Walkes on that day 27th April 1965. Also there were retired Governor General Arthur Hanna and now Governor General Sir Arthur Foulkes.

BLACK TUESDAY
Friday 27 April will mark the 36th anniversary of Black Tuesday, the Tuesday 27 April in 1965 when the late Sir Lynden O. Pindling, the founding Prime Minister of The Bahamas, threw the Speaker's Mace out of the window of the House of Assembly. The Mace is the metal object that precedes the Speaker into Parliament as a symbol of the Speaker's authority. The protest by Sir Lynden was the culmination of a set of plans by the PLP's National General
Council, plotted by the National Committee for Positive Action (NCPA). The late Leader of the Opposition Sir Cecil Wallace Whitfield led the protest outside in the streets. Thousands gathered to support what was going on inside. Inside Sir Lynden told the House that the then governing white merchant oligarchy, known as the Bay Street Boys would not listen to the voice of the people and reason with regard to the Boundaries Commission report for that year
1965. The distribution of seats in favour of the Family Islands was not acceptable to the PLP when the majority of the population lived in New Providence.
Sir Lynden often described how afraid he was on that day. Some say that Sir Milo Butler, the late former Governor General kept urging Sir Lynden to go ahead or he would do it. Eventually Sir Lynden did, threw the Mace out of the Eastern window of the House where it fell in the streets below and was destroyed. Arthur Hanna, the former PLP Deputy Prime Minister who was in the House on that day says that someone brought the pieces to him and he buried them somewhere that he can't remember. Arthur Hanna, Paul Adderley, former Attorney General, Sir Orville Turnquest, now Governor General and
Cyril Stevenson former PLP MP are the only MPs of that era still alive. The PLP left the House and led a massive crowd to the Southern Recreation Grounds from Bay Street. The riot act was read commanding them in the name of the Queen to move from Bay Street. Conscious of the riot that happened in 1942, the
PLP led the crowd from Bay Street south. The name Black Tuesday is said to have been coined by Arthur Foulkes, former MP and now Ambassador. It is borrowed from the expression from the American usage for the day of the Wall Street crash in 1929. Sir Lynden said that the thousands that came out that day were not planned. It was spontaneous given the police and other excitement in the streets. But it was the height of his political career in Opposition and made him a legend in the minds of many. Sir Milo Butler, the people's champion, followed the Mace out the window with the Speaker's Hour Glass that was used to time the speeches of MPs. In those days, each speaker in the House was limited to 15 minutes. While the rule is still on the books, when the PLP came to power in 1967 they stopped enforcing it and it has not been enforced since. Paul Adderley, Orville Turnquest and the late Spurgeon Bethel, all PLP MPs at the time were not told of the PLP's planned action. They did not agree with the subsequent decision of the party to boycott the House after that. When they returned they were suspended from the party. They formed their own party the National Democratic Party. That party was defeated in the 1967 election.