Local News News ‘No paragons of virtue needed for National Heroes’ – historian Sandy Deane28/04/2021096 views By Shamar Blunt Don’t go looking for “perfect” people to determine who should be added to the pantheon of National Heroes, a University of the West Indies historian has declared. Professor Alan Cobley, an expert in South African and comparative history at UWI Cave Hill, advised choosing historical figures who, despite all odds, pursued the noble and just cause of uplifting Barbadian lives. His call came at the launch of Ann Gill – The Making of A Barbadian Hero, a new biography of the only female on the national heroes list, Tuesday at the Barbados Museum. Professor Cobley said that stalwarts in the country’s past must be judged on what they did to improve the livelihoods of Barbadians despite challenges and sometimes violent pushback, instead of lesser-known parts of their lives which may not be acceptable today. He said: “To my mind, a hero is not a paragon of virtue, a hero is somebody who does something extraordinary in the face of a particular challenge. That something drives others also to do things that are extraordinary. “A national hero is someone who uplifts and builds through their actions, so a national hero uplifts and builds a nation.” The historian pointed out that Ann Gill herself was a slave owner, despite her mixed-race and role in the establishment of the Methodist Church in Barbados. Professor Cobley said that though Gill’s slave-owning past is often ignored and overlooked because of her selfless actions in the fight for the freedom of worship for all classes at that time in Barbadian history, a small part of her past should not be scrutinized without understanding the structure of the society at the time. He said: “The issue of slave ownership in a complex society such as Barbados was in the late slavery period in the early 19th century, is one you have to grapple with. “We know from our perspective, that the ownership of one human being by another is abhorrent, and in our own time completely unacceptable. “In fact, even in her time, there was a discussion amongst abolitionists calling for the end of slavery as an inhuman and immoral institution. “We cannot excuse the fact that she was a slave owner, and we cannot forget it, what we can do is try to understand the context of the time in which she lived.” Gill inherited property from her husband Alexander George Gill at his death when she was 28 years old. She donated the land on which the James Street Methodist Church was built. The new biography, the fourth in the series of books being published by the museum under the title Re(w)riting History, delves deep into the history and personal correspondence of Barbados’ only National Heroine. Another UWI historian, Dr. Henderson Carter, who chairs the Publications and Public Programming Committee at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, said students and leaders should pay close attention to the history of the island and the lessons well learned by those who came before us. Dr Carter said: “There are a lot of people in Barbados today who do not appreciate the past, and they think that the past has no relevance to our times, but they miss a salient point. Human endeavours and human relations hardly change, and we can draw out important nuggets from history. “I hope that by reading this text as it gets into our schools, and it gets into our institutions, that people will be inspired.” (SB)