Dear Editor,
This is to express gratitude to Professor Nigel Westmaas for the detailed information provided in SN of 22nd August on ‘The Negro Progress Convention’ (NPC) and a number of related ‘Negro/African Associations’. There are few alive who could identify the location from where the NPC operated. The property it owned still stands, un-memorialised, at the south-eastern corner of Charlotte and Wellington Streets. The building, which was mostly identified with Home Economics had, by the forties, become known as the NPC Hall, where dances were promoted by different agents every Friday night. The attraction was that ‘ladies were free’.
In 1942 in the very Charlotte Street, just four/five doors east of the Convention Hall, at Lot 197 to be exact, was erected the building formally called the ADA ‘Auditorium’.
The African Development Association is the same organisation mentioned in the article as the ‘New Negro Development Association’. F.C. Archer referred to was Ferdinand Christopher Archer, Secretary/Treasurer. He happened to be my godfather. He was also co-founder of the (African) Malteenoes Sports Club. The president of the ADA coincidentally was my father, Isaac Adolphus John. Other members included future parliamentarian in the first National Assembly, Jane Phillips-Gay.
The ADA rented the Auditorium to Aubrey P. Alleyne, then Deputy Principal of Central High School, under J.C. Luck, Principal. Washington High School was opened at 197 Charlotte Street in 1942, where I attended on its first scholarship. Washington High later transitioned to become the B.G. Education Trust under Randolph Cheeks. The lot now remains empty but the school still thrives elsewhere in Georgetown, under younger management as Education Trust College.
But there was always a wry smile about Aubrey Alleyne, who was hard-of-hearing, being appointed Speaker of the House in 1966 – the first National Assembly.
Thanks to Professor Westmaas for reawakening this titillation.
But there remains one outstanding memorial to the African Development Association – one of, if not, the oldest Senior Citizens’ refuge – the ‘Archer Home’ – located at 1 D’urban Street, Wortmanville, some seventy years or more.
Yours faithfully,
E.B. John
