Paul Bogle led the last large scale armed Jamaican rebellion for voting rights and an end to legal discrimination and economic oppression against African Jamaicans. Because of his efforts Bogle was recognized as a national hero in Jamaica in 1969. His face appears on the Jamaican two-dollar bill and 10-cent coin.
Paul Bogle was born free to Cecelia Bogle, a free woman, and an unknown father in the St. Thomas parish in 1822. Bogle’s mother soon died and he was raised by his grandmother. As an adult Bogle owned a home in Stony Gut and had another house in Spring Garden as well as a 500 acre farm at Dunrobin making him one of the few African Jamaicans prosperous enough to pay the fee to vote. In 1845, for example, there were only 104 voters in St. Thomas parish which had an adult population of at least 3,300.
Bogle became a supporter of George William Gordon, an Afro-Jamaican politician and fellow landowner and Baptist. In 1854 Gordon made the 32-year-old Bogle a deacon. Bogle, in turn, built a chapel in Stony Gut which held religious and political meetings.
Officially Jamaican slavery ended in 1833 after the Sam Sharpe Rebellion a year earlier. Yet from 1834 to 1838 former slaves served post-servitude “apprenticeships” to their former owners. They were also subject to a judicial system controlled by the Colonial government primarily for the benefit of the former slaveholders. They endured unemployment and taxes but low wages. In 1865, Gordon chose Bogle to lead a delegation to present their complaints to British Colonial governor, Edward John Eyre.
In August of that year Bogle led a 50 mile march of small farmers and former slaves to Spanish Town to meet with Governor Eyre to discuss their political grievances. They were denied an audience with the governor. - See more at: http://www.blackpast.org/gah/bogle-paul-1822-1865#sthash.AvvrzT8t.dpuf
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