Dialogue with the Dead
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A Moral Portrait of Thomas Girvan
In Morant Bay, Jamaica
October
1865
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N.B. The word ‘Buckra’ sometimes spelled ‘Backra’ was a word used by slaves to depict White slave owners. After emancipation in 1833, the word evolved to depict White people in general and later sometimes was expanded to depict people of elevated status, including non-Whites, i.e., a’ big shot’, so to speak. (See this context in one of the testimonies to the Eyre Commission in the passage below.)
So……, Thomas, my young friend and distant ancestor, whatever possessed you to haul your lily-white European ass from your home in the peaceful country side in South Ayrshire Scotland, across the Atlantic, to find trouble on a mountainside in Jamaica?
Fresh from tertiary level education, engineer and attorney with credentials, in the flower of your youthful power, you could have written your ticket to a cushy life in an urban setting somewhere in Europe or joined the flow of settlers to Canada, to the USA or to Australia.
What sent you to the West Indies? Was it the lure of lucre? Was it the lust for adventure?… The curiosity to experience another geography? Was it to escape the tedium of another bitter North Atlantic winter, the gales of fine,driven sleet stinging your face, your eyes watering, your nose dripping? Or was it the pressure from your aged uncle John Bryce, who dangled the prospects of a family dynasty, a consolidation of his modest but growing material wealth in Jamaica with your youth and your advanced credentials? Was your cousin, Mary Ann, your uncle John’s still unmarried daughter, another perk in the offer to get you to Jamaica? In the end does it even matter why you go there? In the end you follow family. Jamaica calling. You answer the call.
Here you are young man, standing in front of your mountain side dwelling in Jamaica, set precariously on the side of another of the inevitable hills of the Parish of St. Thomas, a group of angry strikers become rioters, sharpening their cutlasses, anxious to move the mountain between your material status and their desperate fight for day to day survival. They need little evidence of arrogant opposition from their exploiters, you among them, to move to decapitate the obstacles in their way. You show restraint. They show restraint. Of course what recourse do you have at 27 years old, in the face of overwhelming numerical odds against you. Besides, their cause is just and they know it. You probably know it also, but how can you express those sentiments and not betray your position of privilege?
You survive, but barely, your skirmish on the mountain under threat of the razor sharp, glistening silver cutlass, the poor man’s guillotine. The protests continue. The militia is activated. Protesters are killed. All hell breaks loose! With a heavy hand, Gov. Eyre deploys the militia and the shooting begins. Colonial firepower overcomes the disproportion in numbers that the labourers possess. Trials by the Colonial authorities ensue, which further decimate the leadership of the rebels.
You marry Mary Ann 6 years later in 1872 and have 3 children. And so it goes…
You may, however, have some interest in some of the consequences of your survival that day in 1865 on the mountainside above Morant Bay. Your 3 children leave Jamaica after your wife Mary Ann’s death to go back to Scotland in 1880. Your 2 sons William and Robert Henderson then leave Scotland and go to the Philippines.
Girvans of Zamboanga, Philippines
Your genetic material and that of your cousin Mary Ann, passed through your son William (Billy), now resides on the Island of Mindanao, Philippines, in a cemetery in a community called Zamboanga.
Margaret, your sister, has contributed to an Australian community as a Girvan Hunter. (See obituary of Thomas Girvan Hunter below and photo of Inga Margaret Girvan Hunter).
Thomas, my young friend and distant ancestor, forgive me this intrusion into your afterlife. Time passes in the here and now, the domain of the living, and soon I may not have the voice to question the motives of your decision to leave your homeland to take part in the exploitation of a group of people, recently traumatized and brutalized by the barbarism of chattel slavery.
Who should atone for the outrage of slavery, the centuries of brutality, the many told and untold crimes against humanity? Should all that era simply be swept under a wall to wall carpet called ‘history’? How do we address the many volumes of wrongs perpetrated against groups of people in the past 500 years? Do we simply wait until the frustrations and resentments of a population accumulate within the thin skin, the bubble veneer of civilization that is containing the accumulating pressure? Do we wait until the bubble veneer bursts? At that point the barbarism begins again and humanity re-becomes feral: virtual predatory animals. Do we suppress information or burn books which dare to keep a record of past atrocities?
Atonement? Justice?
Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of (the) right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. (Theodore Parker-Of Justice and the Conscience, 1853) (‘The above quotation predates ‘The arc of the Moral Universe’-Commonly attributed to Martin Luther King)
Is there such an entity as a ‘Moral Universe’, or is that concept simply a contrived or imagined human abstraction, a fervently desired state? Theodore Parker was able to have had an intuition about a Moral Universe in 1853. Would he have been able to say the same about the arc of the moral universe bending towards justice in 1935-1945? What about in our current world 2022-2023? What about Gaza and Israel in our moment, October, 2023? What does a moral universe say about these continuing tragedies? Does the ‘Moral Universe’ come sometimes tantalizingly close to being fulfilled and then cynically go away? Does it seduce us as a promise then dash our hopes with a snicker? Is barbarism an essential part of our natural state only to be followed with nostalgia for the Utopia of our imagining? What do you think Thomas? Speak young man! Say something!!
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- Inga Margaret Girvan Hunter ,
- Thomas’ Great Granddaughter, in Australia
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Obituary of Thomas Girvan Hunter, Australia (Click on text to enlarge)
Death Certificate of Mary Ann Girvan (1842-1880)
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Death Certificate of Thomas Girvan (1838-1886)