Page 38 - BLACK HISTORY IN BERMUDA red

William Ernest Rudolph Joell • (1902-1985)

W. E. R. Joell was born in 1902. He was an excellent cabinet maker, but tennis
was his greatest passion. He was an avid player and community organiser, often
arranging for international tennis players to visit Bermuda. However, he was not
allowed to play at the national Tennis Stadium as it was off limits to black people.

Propelled by his passion for tennis to undo this injustice, Joell led the movement to
desegregate the stadium. In 1954 he brought Althea Gibson, who would later become
the first black tennis player to win a grand slam title, to Bermuda. She played at the
Tennis Stadium along with Russell Dismont and other black Bermudians. When the
manager of the stadium reprimanded them for using the whites-only facility, Joell
knew he must act. He asked Dismont to petition Parliament to desegregate the
stadium. In 1954, Dismont’s petition was unanimously passed, and the stadium was
officially opened to everyone.

Joell contributed to the Bermudian community in many other ways. At just 22 years
of age he formed his furniture company, Bermuda Furniture Craftsmen, and some
of his pieces can be seen in the Bermuda Cathedral today. He was a signatory of the courtesy the royal gazette
1946 petition to investigate Bermuda’s human rights record taken to England by Dr.
E. F. Gordon. In 1958 he founded the Bermuda Tennis Development Fund to sponsor
coaches who would teach the game to Bermudian children. He died in 1985 and in
2003 the tennis stadium was named after him as “The W.E.R. Joell Tennis Stadium”.

Roosevelt Brown • (1932-2007)

Roosevelt Brown was an activist who played
a critical role in the abolition of the property
vote. Following the success of the Theatre
Boycott, he and other alumni of Howard Academy
formed the Committee for Universal Adult
Suffrage, which held meetings throughout
Bermuda in 1960.

The meetings which saw white and black leaders
come together to debate the electoral system
galvanised the public and put pressure on MPs
to make changes to the electoral system which had restricted the right to vote and to
run for Parliament to owners of property over a certain value. As a result, all adult
Bermudians were able to vote in the 1963 General Election and in 1968 the last vestiges
of the property vote were abolished.

A PLP organiser, MP and Pan-Africanist, he was elected to the House of Assembly in 1968
and organised a Black Power conference in Bermuda in 1969. He spent much of his later
life working in developing communities in Africa, the Pacific and the Caribbean. He published
his autobiography Me One in 2002 and was honoured with a commemorative stamp
after his death.

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