My mother, Marjorie Banks, like the mothers of the other contestants, was concerned about us being involved in the Queen Show but she did not anticipate the possibility of any violence. They, like the many persons who filled the hall of the senior section of The Valley Secondary School to capacity’ saw it as an opportunity for their daughters and Anguillian girls to have a new experience.
The Anguilla of 1967 was not one in which there were many exciting things for young people to do. There were the teenage dances at the Community Centre, or in the senior section of The Valley Secondary School, and there were family dances at the Evening Star Casino organized by Mr Joe Gumbs. These were done mainly in August when Anguillians from the US came home for the summer and the highlight of the year, August Monday. As young people, we looked forward to those parties, although the brave ones among us would periodically have to go to the back room where Joe Gumbs was dozing away while he played country and western tunes or endless meringue songs on the gramophone or dukebox. As young people we wanted to hear calypsoes by Sparrow or any other calypsonian, or some soul music by Percy Sledge, instead of “Blue birds over the mountain” and «Good night Irene».
For young people, the August Monday bazaar was the biggest thing that happened all year. We looked forward to steel pan music, cakes, sugar cakes and peppermints and, best of all, Tee Tee walking on the wire and, of course, the icecream! You waited in line patiently while they put ice imported from St Kitts, by the block, and rock salt from Sandy Ground, into the icecream machine which had to be turned for what seemed like hours before you could get a cone filled with the quickly melting ice cream.
Of course we also looked forward to going to the boat race in Meads Bay on August Thursday or rather, to tell the truth, to go to the dance in Davis Hughes hall.
Some 5 years before, in 1962, the Magistrate›s wife a Trinidadian, Mrs Evelyn, had organized a carnival with a queen show, troupes and all, but the churches had objected to that level of «decadence» so that was a one-time event. I remember hearing my mother say that the Methodist Church had ex-communicated my father for his involvement in that show…Yes, Victor Banks Sr. was not allowed to have communion at his church because he had helped to organize Carnival!
So, in an Anguilla with little excitement for young girls, my mother, who was born and raised in St Kitts, of an Anguillan mother and a Kittitian father, thought like the other mothers of the contestants, that this was a good opportunity for us to have a positive, fun experience. As a tall, slim teenager who had been teased by her brothers about her «mawgureness» all her life, I was initially not excited to be in the show but as we had the practices and the etiquette training and the tea parties, at Government House I enjoyed the camaraderie with the other girls and had a lot of fun preparing for the show.
So the day came and we were all excited.
My Kittitian-Anguilian mother, had mixed affiliations. When she was in Anguilla she felt that she had to defend St Kitts – but when she went to visit her relatives in St Kitts, she was a staunch Anguillian, so they knew better than to say anything bad about Anguilla!
When my father got ill suddenly in 1963 and died after a two-year illness, he left my mother, at the age of 41, with six children to raise and no employment outside the home. To support the family my mother had creatively developed what she had done for the family into a business. She made bread and mawby for sale, she developed a dressmaking business, used our family car as a rental and converted our family home into a bed and breakfast guest house. So my mother had no need to hire a dressmaker to prepare me for the show. She made me a beautiful gold satin dress with a big bow in the back for my evening wear, a green and white linen dress with a ruffle around the neck for my casual wear, and lent me her black and white swimsuit for my swimsuit appearance.
Anyone who remembers my mother knows that she was a beautiful, gracious woman, with a figure that was the talk of the town, so she would have walked away with the crown for any show! So although that swimsuit did not fitted me in the way it would have fit her, she enthusiastically supported her daughter.
My mother knew one of the Kittitians…Cromwell Bowry, knicknamed Gumbsie, who came from St Kitts to chair the show. He was the brother of well loved Nurse Doris Bowry who had been working in Anguilla for many years. Gumbsie was the MC, a comedian and a guitarist, and will always be remembered for his famous words as he was interrupted in his strumming and singing of My Grandfather’s Clock and shouted: “The show must go on!”
Roy Nias of St Kitts who worked at the National Mid Atlantic Bank, which was housed where the present Geewee’s Jamaican Restaurant now stands, and Mrs Byron, the wife of the Warden, the top administrator from St Kitts, were key figures in the organization of the show. They were assisted by other prominent Anguillians who might have seen the show as a good thing as it seemed inevitable that Anguilla and St Kitts would be going forward together into Statehood. Anguilla had been ignored by St Kitts for years, anyhow so some people probably felt it could get any worse but could possibly mean more help for Anguilla.
I write all this in retrospect. In 1967, like a typical teenager, I was not thinking that far ahead. I just lived for the moment, enjoying the experience and all the exciting things our preparation involved at the beautiful Landsome Estate House. We had etiquette sessions, walked balancing books on our heads to gain poise, paraded through the huge dining room with its highly polished mahogany floor, and around the spacious verandah which was wrapped around most of the second floor, walked up and down the cut limestone stately steps that led to the front door, had girl talk sessions and wonderful camaraderie. As six teenage girls, having the experience of a life time, Anne Edwards, Blondell Martin, Maycelle Connor, Edwina Carty, Betty Owen, and yours truly, Linda Banks, we were oblivious to all the grumbling in Anguilla. We did not even think about what could happen after our night of excitement…for us it was just a show!
So the day of the show dawned bright and clear, a beautiful, Saturday morning, February 4, 1967, and we anxiously counted the hours until evening came. I had a special hair style, because my mother had “ironed” my hair for the event. That meant that she had put an iron comb ( called an ironing comb) into an iron pot of coals called a “coal pot” and run it through my kinky hair, that was sectioned out into small “plots”, until it was straightened. Pride would have prevented me from crying out as the iron comb slipped and sizzled a little piece of skin, here and there, usually by the ear! Oh how we torture ourselves for the sake of beauty!
So the long awaited nigh cam. We were ready for our show! Our chaperones, parents in most cases, would have dressed us for the first appearance in our swim suits. I can still see my mother giving her parting shots of advice to all of us to enjoy the show. And then it happened!
For her part, my mother remembers being the last one to enter the hall where the audience waited expectantly while Gumbsie strummed and belted out “My Grandfather’s Clock “and it stopped short” – when he had to stop short!
All hell broke loose! My mother said that when she was let into the hall, she sensed that something was wrong so she did not get much past the door…she just stood there!
Then her eyes started to burn and the room was plunged into darkness. People hollered and screamed, while Gumbsie finally gave up his Grandfather’s Clock song and his chant that “the show must go on.”
We, the contestants, who had been left in the dressing room, huddled together believing that it was an attack on us. We tried to fit under tables, desks, anywhere – to hide from these people who we were sure were targetting us, the contestants! There was the sound of stones on the roof.The place was completely dark and our eyes burned in a way we had never before experienced! After running around in circles for a while, crying and wondering if this was the end of the world, we courageously decided to venture outside to the other hall to be with our families. As we opened the door we heard everybody screaming, praying and crying for help. Although it was dark, I recognized my mother at the entrance to that other hall and she told me to go home. So I ran back into the dressing room, grabbed a towel to cover my swim suit, and ran home. I thanked my lucky stars that I Iived next door to the high school. I was far from safe though because as I hurried home I passed a group of men behind a pile of stones next to what was then a snack bar, run by Slim Horsford. “Oh my God,” I thought, “these are the people who are attacking us and they got me now!” I thought for sure that they would know that I was a contestant, so I shook with relief when I heard one of them say, “You go home lady”. Relieved and breathless I scuttled home to safety.
When I arrived I saw that my family home was filled with people I did not know…people who were screaming and crying…people who were terrified because no one knew whether anywhere was safe and what was going to happen next!
I later learned from my mother that everyone was panicking in the big hall – afraid to leave to go home and also afraid to stay! The school had a bank of windows on both sides. Someone had the wisdom to open one window and, like a bunch of sheep crossing a road, everyone lined up and jumped through that one window to what seemed to be safety. Women’s high fashion of the day was what we called “hobble skirts” – skirts which were tight fitting at the hips with a slit up the back or to the side. In a frantic effort to escape, women tore their skirts and jumped one after the other through that single “safe” window. Some people then climbed over the low fence between the school and my home and ran to safety, while others found their way home by whatever route seemed safe including running through the Anglican grave yard! My mother never told me how she got home, but all that night our home was the scene of people babbling hysterically, and alternating between praying for God to have mercy and wondering, “What is Anguilla coming to?”
Little did we know that Anguilla would never be the same again as the Queen Show
had set us on a path of no return to Revolution and Freedom!
Yes, It happened fifty years ago
The Anguilla Revolution started with a show
A Queen show!
