Dr Edison Jackson, whose grandfather was a merchant seaman who left Barbados and settled in Virginia. Now Jackson searches for his Bajan roots.

by TONY BEST

In Heathsville, where Dr Edison Jackson was raised, few people had heard about Barbados, and society's lines were drawn strictly along racial lines.

"Growing up in the segregated South, you were either White or Black in Virginia," he told the SUNDAY SUN. " If you were Black, you were Black. That's how they treated everyone."

What the president of Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York (CUNY), one of the most successful administrators in the CUNY system today, was driving at was that Blacks and Whites all saw themselves through the prism of race, and not where someone's roots could be traced to.

But things began to change after Jackson came to the northeast and heard Bajans and other Caribbean immigrants emphasise their cultural underpinnings, just like Italians who trace their origins to Sicily, Rome, Florence or other parts of Italy, Jews who spoke with passion about Israel, and the Irish who tout their links to the Blarney Stone.

"It was a whole new experience for me," he said.

Yes, Bajans and other West Indians in the city recognise their blackness and share with African-Americans the manifestations of ethnic pride. But they also talk about Barbados, Jamaica, Grenada, Antigua, Trinidad and Tobago or Guyana, to cite a few cases.

Actually, Jackson recalled hearing his mother talk decades ago about the Barbadian roots in their family tree; his grandfather, Jim Payne, who came from Barbados and worked on steamships plying the waters between Canada and Virginia in the early 1900s.

It was in the South that Payne met the woman who became his wife and they raised a family, one child being Jackson's mother, two others being his uncles. Bajan link

"It's the 'Barbajan' link on my mother's side," was the way he put it. "Mamma had talked about it, but it was only in coming to New York that I began to give greater significance to it."

That explains why the president, who has succeeded in transforming Medgar Evers College from a failing tertiary-level educational institution – a kind of stepchild in the network of senior and community colleges in the City University – into a highly respected four-year school of higher learning, visited Barbados in search of his roots.

"I went to Barbados two summers ago with my wife and spent a week there, just trying to get a feel for that part of me that I didn't know was there," he explained.

"I think it is a great place, the educational system is very good and the people, as I know them here [in New York City] were very nice, so it wasn't a big thing.

"But what was interesting for me, though, was I saw several people who had the same physical features as my mother's two brothers.

"Of course, they were not Paynes but they looked like they could have been twins with my two uncles. And it was kind of wow!"

Medgar Evers College is itself an interesting story. Named for Medgar Evers – a famous civil rights leader in the South of the 1950s and 1960s who was murdered by white racists in Mississippi because of the fight he waged against segregation – it was conceived as a school to educate young people, especially black youth in central Brooklyn.

But after its doors were opened, the college struggled to gain legitimacy and credibility alongside Brooklyn College, a much-revered school of choice for West Indians living in Brooklyn.

After Jackson, who holds a doctorate in education from Rutgers University in New Jersey, took over the presidency of Medgar in 1989, it began to score gains and it has been building on them ever since.

Academics and community leaders credit him with improving the quality of its educational offerings, expanding its facilities and recording an increase in the number of graduates.

Today, more Caribbean students flock to its classrooms than ever before. Today, 60 to 70 per cent of its 6 000-plus students are West Indian.

"We have been able to achieve some significant things at Medgar," the president said. For instance: * It has expanded the opportunities for students, especially Blacks, to receive degrees in the natural sciences – something which many schools have been trying, but failing to do. * An initiative is reaching an increasing number of young black male graduates, a success story that has eluded colleges and universities throughout the United States. * When the 12th annual Caribbean Multi-National Business Conference is held in Antigua next month, the school and its president will play key roles.

"We are hoping to have a collaborative relationship with the University of the West Indies," said Jackson.

That could turn out to be a natural fit.