The Royal Gazette is today launching a special education series on the 50th anniversary of the theatre boycott, which broke down racial segregation in Bermuda's public places.

The boycott, which took place in June and July 1959 also paved the way for the universal adult suffrage movement which followed.

The series, which will run every Tuesday for the next nine weeks, is being produced by The Royal Gazette's Newspapers in Education coordinator Jennifer Hind, who said: "While the past is a constant part of our present whether we realise it or not, anniversaries provide an opportunity to focus on particular aspects of our past in more detail.

"It is for this reason that the 1959 boycott of local movie theatres has been made the primary focus of the current NIE series."

Kim Dismont-Robinson wrote an in-depth feature on the Progressive Group's efforts to dismantle segregation on the 40th anniversary of the boycott, which appeared in the June 16, 1999 edition of The Royal Gazette. Errol Williams' documentary When Voices Rise … subsequently took the Island by storm on its 2002 debut at the Bermuda International Film Festival.

From being secret for 40 years, the story and its protagonists are now very well-known, so rather than retell the story, the NIE series makes available for teachers, students and the general public, original documents from the period. These documents include minutes of meetings, personal letters, photographs, Parliamentary reports, news articles, headlines and letters to the editor.

Most of the material is already in the public domain, but not particularly accessible.

Newspapers are accessible on microfilm at the Bermuda National Library, but the newspapers were in often questionable condition when they were photographed, and the quality of microfilm varies.

Other documents are available at the Government Archives, not easily accessible to teachers who work outside Hamilton. So, in addition to the material presented in the in-paper instalments, other documents have been transcribed and placed on The Royal Gazette's Internet website (www.theroyalgazette.com) so that they may be accessed readily.

One series of documents which may be of special interest are the minutes of the meetings of the Young Liberal Political Movement, which later called themselves a Progressive Group, which are being made public for the first time.

Mrs. Hind explained:"Dr. Stanley Ratteray allowed me to photocopy the hand written minutes in 1979 when I was a history student at the University of York in the UK.

"My degree course required a long essay based on original research, and mine was on the formation of the Bermuda Workers Association. I told Dr. Ratteray about my research when I met him socially, and about my desire to do further research on the 1940s and 1950s. At that moment he shared with me his involvement in the theatre boycott, and subsequently allowed me to photocopy the minutes he had kept so carefully.

"Unfortunately, life got in the way of my pursuit of higher degrees. Teaching English Language and Literature at Warwick Academy left me precious little time for research and writing of my own, and I regret I did not carry through with my intentions.

"The 50th anniversary seemed an appropriate occasion to use the minutes in the way I believe Dr. Ratteray intended – for increasing awareness and understanding of the motives and methods of those determined to march Bermuda along the road to equality for all its citizens and residents.

"My current research made me realise that the boycott was one of a long series of protests against inequality, a series that continued well beyond 1959.

For this reason, the first of the instalments very briefly covers the years leading up to 1959 and the last covers the decades since.

"Yesterday's interview of Mrs. Georgine Hill by Tim Smith also offered an excellent introduction to the protest movement of the 1950s.

"By presenting this series my intention is to make us see more clearly the obstacles that had to been overcome, and the courage, determination and faith in Bermuda of those who went before. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude."

n 'Road to Equality' series starts today on Page 16