Our next speaker is no stranger to any of us, Mr. Audible's Simmons.
He is the author of Our Lady of Labour. Speaking about and honouring Dr. Barbara Ball,
I don't know what Simmons was an elected member of the US House of Assembly for
more than 30 years and a former president of the Bermuda Industrial Union.
He's also served as the Caribbean representative for the Geneva based union organisations,
the International Federation of Workers, the IFP, IWW and the International Union of Food and Allied Workers Associations.
The AUC. He had his early education in Bermuda and then attended the American Institute for Free Labour Development in Washington,
D.C., and later Ruskin College in Oxford, England, where he majored in sociology.
He is best known as well, Bermuda and the Caribbean for his organising and negotiating skills and the numerous
landmark successes he achieved during his leadership of America's working class.
He was a close associate of Dr. Probabl for over 30 years, making him eminently qualified to provide this interesting account of Dr. Barbara Ball.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Adelson and. Thank you, Evelyn.
Good evening. Sisters and brothers, ladies and gentlemen.
And I will be reading from Our Lady of Labour.
This book is singularly about one lady and that is the Lady of Labour, Dr. Ball,
and I'm going to give you a few things about her outside just reading that the bill has.
Was, first of all, somewhat like Wendy, read about what her father was was experiencing back during those old days.
And that the board was a member of the Bermuda Industrial Union in the 1960s, she took up membership.
She was elected as general secretary after I made it a lot of discussion amongst black people and leaders in the country.
Nobody wanted a right leader at that time because excuse this expression, but it's easy to understand it anything else?
They couldn't be trusted to lead tracks.
And that is the type of thing so that the ball had to start from in the rear and work herself up to make friends with the other people like admits,
of course. And eventually we saw that Dr. Ball, first of all, had a massive intellect, a good intellect.
She was a educated person. She was a Christian woman.
She was not married and B learnt all about her.
But she was prepared to go to the ring and fight any rate system that existed at the time.
And a lot and a big system was there in Bermuda in the 1960s.
In 1960. Roussel Baron initiated that movement of the committee for a universal adult suffrage.
U. S. The movement had as its main objective, the enfranchisement of all people who reached the age of 21.
At that time, a person could only vote.
If he or she owned a piece of land that was assessed and briny ice, I say it's 60 pounds, I think you said 100 pounds.
I said people 40 pounds with me. And now that's it.
This system militated against blacks having the right to vote since the majority of blacks did not land.
It was on this issue that Dr Ball made her public debut on a panel of prominent speakers in a series of meetings throughout the island.
The speakers included Sir Henry Tarka.
Robert Bobby Arat. And I just want to go here.
It's not in the book, but it's important. I'll be back.
Barrett, who was a member of Parliament for a short period, he won a seat that Dr. Boyle and Stanley Morton head, if you remember.
And Bobby spoke at the clubhouse in Bryant, one of these C U A s meetings, and Bobby was the most sincere and noble.
Right, man, that you could find at that time.
Oh, man, you're not. These books are not written in today's environment.
Yeah. These books were written and that people were very much a minority in power and the thought of women in power.
It was just impossible back in the 60s.
But before I go on the story about Bob Barrett, if you know him, he's the nicest guy you want to know that night.
He's a good artist. And he was like me, I guess mediocre politician, but ambitious.
Just got to integrate. This was his speech at Treehouse in New York.
He says, You've got to integrate. But I must admit.
If I saw my daughter walking up the pathway coming home and she was accompanied by a black man, I'm not so sure if I were going to say I like that.
And the house laughed at Bobby because they know he was doing the best she can to make the point that even me,
the most liberal white people, have problems with total integration.
So that was Bobby, other persons that were on those panels was Olive Francis, John W. Swan, Mansfield, Black and Walter and H.
Robinson. The group travelled throughout Bermuda, drawing large crowds on each occasion that the bell distinguished herself met her.
Candid yet positive remarks.
She spoke in favour of every citizen of Bermuda having the right to vote upon reaching the age of 21 and not having to own land.
She near-term focus on the Ireland social and economic shortcomings,
specifically highlighting the this clarity of low wages paid to current workers compared to break for millions.
And she called for an equitable distribution of the wealth on this island that the bill asserted that Bermuda's claim to a
vibrant economy was false because that wealth was concentrated in the hands of a white minority group of people citizens.
Up until this time, equitable social interaction with blacks had been yet to be tested.
She went to the Girls High School, which was segregated, and they never had a black student or a teacher in that school during that.
First time. Her popularity with the black population grew in proportion to her increasing popularity with her white colleagues.
Her speeches and her alignment with the.
What's going to happen? The proponents of.
Universal suffrage resulted in adaptable being asked to discontinue her partnership with the Bermuda Medical Association.
It was in such instances as these, many of which would follow.
That the venerable doctor sought strength not already.
And know. Notice in Yemen, the period of 1960 was an interesting time for the U.S.
The Bermuda Industrial Union never paid full time officers, nor was there anyone with training or experience.
And Dr. Bill came in at that time and she spent some two years without pay working for an organisation that was seen as a black organisation.
I just want to say that we have here in this book, a photograph of some 25 people who attended a seminar back in the 1960s.
And I will conclude Madam Chair by saying that Dr. Bell had faced the courts on more than one occasion,
not for a crime that she committed, but for her leadership by a white woman for black people.
The reader of this story has now witnessed, I say in the book to the notable acts of service of the ball and readers,
Lady of Labour and oh, what a lady she was.
Thank you.