Rebellion Remembered, Rebellion Rewritten: Paul Bogle and Jamaica’s Political Imagination

Author: Shamoy Dixon

Field of Study: Africana Studies; Latin America and Caribbean Area Studies

Program Affiliation: McNair Scholars Program

Faculty Mentors: Nathaniel Mathews

Easel: 11

Timeslot: Midday

Abstract: In 1865, Paul Bogle led the Morant Bay Rebellion to protest against racial inequalities and the harsh economic conditions faced by the newly emancipated Black population of Jamaica. Despite the brutal suppression and initial reaction by the colonial government that deemed the Rebellion and the Rebels as savage behavior, the Jamaican government post-independence shifted attitudes towards the event. In 1969, Bogle became celebrated by the mixed-race government for his role and received the highest honor, National Hero, thus becoming a symbol of Jamaican Nationalism. By declaring Paul Bogle a National Hero, the government of Jamaica transformed him into a mythologized nationalist symbol to reconcile the nation’s revolutionary past with its modern political identity, using his legacy to ease tensions surrounding the state’s treatment of Afro-Jamaicans and to promote a unifying narrative of resistance and national pride.