Collins Wall Nonsense Debunked

As promised, we have published on page 2 of today's Tribune photographs taken in the early thirties of the Collins property, which is now being landscaped and renovated by the Antiquities, Monuments and Museums Corporation.

A high wall, later built to enclose the property, eventually became controversial after Collins A venue, Centreville and Palmdale were carved out of the bushland that had earlier surrounded it. Because of the development on the eastern side of the wall, and the fact that the Collins property had been sold to developers, most of the enclosures that had secured the property were taken down - all but a section of the ornate iron fence that fronted the property on Shirley Street and the western wall.

As settlements grew up on either side of that wall, persons on the west had to walk a considerable distance around the wall to go to work, to shop and to send their children tc school. The wall, which now divided them, became an issue. Many persons on the western side of the wall erected a ladder on both sides as a short cut, and daily persons scaled the wall to carry ontheir business. Naturally there were accidents. On one occasion a young boy broke his arm, on another a pregnant woman lost her child.

The incident of the pregnant woman became an issue in the 1956 election. Sir Etienne Dupuch, a representative for the Eastern District, lost his seat in the House because of that wall.

One day school teacher Donald Davis came to The Tribune to tell Sir Etienne about the . woman's accident and the social injustice of this wall remaining. Those opposing Sir Etienne's re-election knew that at that time it was an unpopular social issue, but an issue that, regardless of personal loss, he would champion. So it was important that they made him aware of it.

We remember him coming back to his office very upset about that wall. He immediately sat down and "fired off" several articles for it either to come down or a road to be built through it to allow free passage to all persons living on ei~her side. Bahamians - predominantly black -living on the western side of the wall were jubilant. However, those living on the eastern side of the wall were Sir Etienne's constituents, and they were not at all pleased. Although mainly white Bahamians lived on the eastern side of the wall, black Bahamians were also residents. The black Bahamians joined with their white neighbours in sending a petition to the House to leave the wall intact. Those on the eastern side, regardless of colour, felt that their property val ... ues would go down if they did not remain segregated from "the rest."

Sir Etienne knew that the situation was morally wrong. He also knew that if he went against the wishes of his constituents in fighting for social justice for all Bahamians he would lose the election. His principles were more important to him than a House of Assembly seat. He continued the fight to dismantle the wall. He lost his election.

However, the 1956 fight over the wall had nothing to do with Mr Collins who had died in 1946.

Nor had the building of the wall anything to do with segregating one group of people from the other. From 1871, what later became the Brice followed by the Collins property, was an oasis surrounded by bush as the photos on page 2 and taken many years later will show.

Prohibition - the Volstead Act - was introduced in 1920 when America went dry. Bahamians entered the bootleg era with great gusto determined to slake the thirst of their liquor starved northern neighbours. The bootleg era brought untold wealth to the Treasury, but it also filled the coffers of mobsters like Chicago's Al Capone.

It was during this period of relative wealth that two of our major hotels were built and a gambling casino was opened in the Bahamian Club on West Bay Street. Business was good in the Bahamas, but speakeasies, mobs and murder escalated in the United States. Prohibition could not be enforced and so it was repealed in 1933. The days of Rum Row were over in the Bahamas. The severe hurricane of 1926 and then the Wall Street crash crippled this country.

The Bahamas was back in the boondocks. Its people needed employment.

Mr. Ralph Collins rose to the need. He decided to create employment by building a wall around his property for which he paid his labourers 1/- a day and gave them a hot meal. Communities being built around his wall came many years later.

However, a letter writer to this newspaper who knows nothing about those days, wants to put another spin on history. He claims that Mr Collins built his wall to keep black people on one side of the wall from mingling with white people on the other side. As the letter writer will see from the photographs on page 2 there were only trees - not people - on either side of that wall. Those communities that created so much trouble in later years did not yet exist.

His argument sounds like those of the world's dimwits - never having had to suffer the horrors of World War II -who claim there was no Holocaust.

A member of the Collins family, who sent us these photographs, attached a most apt quote from the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky that will cover today's unbelievers:

"Man," wrote Dostoyevsky, "has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic."

Editorial, The Tribune
April 24, 2009