THE PARADOX OF FREEDOM

A Mother's Project

David Scott: To begin with, Orlando, where in Jamaica were you born, and when?

Orlando Patterson: I was born in Savanna-la-Mar, Westmoreland, on 5 June 1940. My parents were actually living in a little town outside of Sav-la-Mar called Grange Hill. My father was the detective there, and my mother - eventually she became a seamstress, but I don't think she was working at the time.

DS: So, you were born in Sav and you lived in Grange Hill?

OP: Not for very long; eventually I think we moved into Sav. I was there when I was an infant but I have no recollection of it.

DS: Where did you grow up?

OP: My parents split up when I was about two years old (after a long separation they came back together). So, the dawn of consciousness for me would have been Kingston. My mom and her sister both left the fathers of their children and went to live - all three sisters - in Kingston.

DS: What year would that have been?

OP: That would have been 1942 or so. My earliest memories are of Allman Town, Kingston, in 1942, 1943, when I was about three - in the middle of the war.

DS: Brothers and sisters?

OP: Half-brothers and -sisters. My father was much older than my mother. He was born in 1897. With his first wife he had six children. They were almost as old as my mother was. In fact, the eldest one was, I want to say, a year or so younger than she was. Which made for a complicated relationship, as you can imagine.

DS: That's your father's side. What about on your mother's side?

OP: I was my mother's only child, which was very important. I wouldn't be sitting here with you if it weren't for that fact.

DS: Why do you say that?

OP: Because I'm convinced that one of the main factors accounting for success, especially among children from working-class backgrounds, is simply the amount of time they're exposed to adults. It's as simple as that, and it's something I want to explore: the relation between success and how much attention one has received from caregivers. If you're an only child, especially with a very ambitious mother who was very attentive, just think about it, the adult exposure is just enormous, compared to, say, being one of six children whose parents are working.

DS: So, not only were you an only child, but your mother was devoted to you.

OP: Yes, I was her project.

DS: In a very self-conscious way, it sounds. You say it as though it was something she deliberately committed herself to.

OP: Yes, in a very self-conscious way, which I was aware of from early. She more or less invested all her ambitions in me. Because I think she felt she hadn't lived up to her expectations of herself, and certainly the expectations her parents had of her.

DS: Is she still alive?

OP: No, she died in 2002, at the age of eighty-four.

DS: And your father?

OP: He died quite a while back, in 1969.

DS: When your parents split up, did you keep in contact with your father?

OP: Not much. He remained in Sav, and as a detective he was sent around. He was all over the place. He remained in Sav for a while, then he was in Falmouth, and then eventually he ended up in Kingston. As one of the few "native" detectives, he was kept very busy by the colonial police force and there are numerous references to him in The Gleaner, dating back to the late 1920s.1

But in fact, between the ages of two and eleven, sort of the classic period of childhood, I was essentially an only child being brought up by a single mom. Then they came back together. For her, I was the main reason for their reconciliation. I had to go to high school, and he was important in that.2

DS: What were their names, your mother and father?

OP: My mother was Almena, shortened to Mina; her maiden name was Morris. My father was Charles Patterson. He was one of the first Black persons to make the grade of "detective" in the colonial police force in Jamaica. As I said, he was born in 1897, so he came of age in about 1920, a teenager even earlier, in 1916. He fought in the First World War. And he would have overlapped in the constabulary with Claude McKay.3 I never asked my father if he knew him. He would have been his contemporary; it would have been about the same time. I would say, in terms of innate intelligence, he was extraordinarily smart to make that grade in the colonial police force.

DS: Did he have to go for special training?

OP: I don't think so. But he had gone through some post-elementary schooling. He had done the training for the constabulary force, and they must have recognized his special talent. He had one especially interesting talent. Remember, this was the age before the tape recorder. And he was phenomenally good at shorthand. He claimed that he had the highest speed of anyone ever tested in Jamaica! He was virtually a walking tape recorder, the closest thing to that. His notes were quite amazing. And, as a result of this skill, when Marcus Garvey was deported back to Jamaica in 1927 the colonial authorities assigned my father as a detective to tail him.4 They were scared to death of Garvey. The government had him watched. They wanted to get him on sedition from his speeches, and my father was assigned to take charge and note what he said.

DS: Is this something your father told you, or something you learned later?

OP: He never did tell me about that part of it. I learned about it later and have evidence of it because I have all the notes. Meticulous notes. But a fascinating thing happened to him. He was always a thinking man, and a big PNP [People's National Party] supporter from early. And in the course of listening to Garvey and tailing him, he became radicalized by Garvey and thought that he was saying a lot of good things. Which deeply annoyed the authorities, because he wasn't coming up with anything that they could use. And he kept telling them, "Well, he's not saying anything seditious." And I think he got into a little trouble as a result. He came under suspicion. Then he became even more radicalized, as he got involved with the PNP. He was a big PNP man and a union man. He started to unionize the police. He claimed he was one of the main founders of the Jamaica Police Federation.5 And this was a no-no with the colonial authorities. But he continued with this, and eventually they booted him out of the police force. He sued and eventually won his case. But they never promoted him. In many ways he was a policeman with the attitude toward law and order that policemen have. It was very unfair not to have promoted him, because he was a very good detective. He was on several major crime cases in Jamaica; he solved several well-known cases and was well known in the police force. I remember as a young person going around Jamaica saying to people in the police force, "I am Charles Patterson's son," and they would know him because he was the person who started the police federation.

But the Garvey thing is fascinating. He never told me about the work he had done; I only discovered this later. But what I do recall, after my mother and father came back together, is that in his little library there was a first edition of The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey. And I remember reading that book; in fact, it was one of the earliest political books I read. There were two books he had in his library that must have been strong influences on him: one was The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey and the other was Black Metropolis by St Clair Drake.6 How he got Black Metropolis I don't know, but those two books were in his library along with all his lodge books. He was a very big lodge man. The Garvey book and Black Metropolis I used to read as a young teenager.

DS: You speak of your father with warmth and even admiration. So, you had a good relationship with him?

OP: No, that's incorrect. This is just me speaking retrospectively. We didn't get along, because he had the authoritarian manner of a policeman. And I grew up during the classic period of childhood with my mother, who was pretty strict, but we worked on our relationship. As a single woman with a son whom she was very determined to see succeed, she not only gave me a lot of adult attention, but she treated me almost like an adult companion. We would talk about things. I knew all about our finances; I'd help with them. And she never hid anything from me. Difficult times, I'd know about them. She would read a lot to me, and then, from about age seven or so (by which time I could read very well), one of my tasks was to get The Gleaner and read to her while she was sewing.

DS: You had a very intimate relationship with your mother.

OP: Yes, it was too close almost, because she was a very strong personality.

DS: This would have been interrupted in some respect by your parents' reconciliation.

OP: I couldn't abide his authoritarian manner. And, of course, I had had eight years in which my mother didn't have very nice things to say about him anyway. And so, by the time...