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Born to a slave mother and a planter father who was attorney
to several sugar estates in Jamaica, George William Gordon was self-educated and became a
landowner in St Thomas.
In the face of attempts to crush the spirit of the freed
people of Jamaica and again reduce them to slavery, Gordon entered politics. He faced
severe odds as the people whose interests he sought to serve did not qualify to vote.
He subdivided his own lands, selling farm lots to the people
as cheaply as possible, and organised a marketing system through which they could sell
their produce at fair prices.
Gordon urged the people to protest against and to resist the
oppressive and unjust conditions under which they were forced to live.
Gordon was arrested and charged for complicity in what is now
called the Morant Bay Rebellion in 1865. He was illegally tried by court martial and, in
spite of a lack of evidence, convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed on October
23, 1865.
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