The Griot | Stories Roots Legacy

In 1983 an American television report alleged that the highest levels of the Bahamian government were linked to the drug trade. In 1984 Prime Minister Lynden Pindling called a commission of inquiry. This episode tells what the record shows: the allegations that started it, the hearings in Miami and Nassau, the testimony of one witness that the prime minister himself disputed, the commission's reported findings about corruption between 1978 and 1982, and what did and did not follow. Pindling was never charged with any crime.Sources: UPI coverage of the 1984 hearings, Washington Post reporting quoted by Bahamian historians, The Nassau Guardian, Bahamianology, and published histories of Bahamian independence. Where a figure comes from a single account, the episode says so.

For more than twenty years, a painted face looked out over the corner of Matthews Lane and Beeston Street in Kingston. In February 2013, police painted it over.The man on that wall was Glenford "Early Bird" Phipps — remembered in Matthews Lane for a basic school that still carries his name, remembered by Bob Marley's circle as the cook who went with them to Germany in 1980, and named in a 1991 New Jersey State Commission of Investigation report as the man who had headed the Spangler Posse's New York City operations. When he was killed in Kingston in 1990, he was working as Supervisor of Metropolitan Parks and Markets.This documentary follows the record — the report, the reporting, and a poem by Kamau Brathwaite — to show how one life held all of those places at once, and what the record still cannot tell us.The report's statements are an intelligence assessment by a state commission, not court findings. We found no record that Early Bird was ever charged in the United States. Scenes are reconstructions made for this film; they are not archival footage.Chapters0:00 The painted face2:29 Chapter 1 — Matthews Lane5:50 Chapter 2 — Bob Marley's cook8:04 Chapter 3 — The American record12:28 Chapter 4 — July 199015:11 Chapter 5 — The murals17:13 Chapter 6 — Four pictures of one manSourcesNew Jersey State Commission of Investigation, "Afro-Lineal Organized Crime" (March 1991)Jamaica Observer; The Gleaner; Ioan Grillo, "Jamaican Organized Crime After the Fall of Dudus Coke", CTC Sentinel (2014); Annie Paul, "Iconoclasm in Babylon" (2013); Kamau Brathwaite, "Trench Town Rock" (1994)Watch next: Zeeks Phipps (the brother's story).#Jamaica #TrueCrime #JamaicanHistory

On 22 April 1978, more than thirty thousand people filled the National Stadium in Kingston to watch Bob Marley join the hands of Prime Minister Michael Manley and opposition leader Edward Seaga. The gesture became a legend. This episode sets the legend against the record: who really organized the night, what was seen and said, and what happened to the people and the peace afterward, including the 1979 police killing of Claudie Massop, the 1982 acquittal of the officers, the shooting of Bucky Marshall in New York in 1980 and the election violence of 1980.Sources: Jamaica Observer (2013 recollections by photographer Howard Moo-Young; 2018 articles on the concert and on Tommy Cowan and Claudie Massop), Caribbean Beat (issue 90), Andscape, History.com and Jamaica Gleaner retrospectives on the 1980 election. Where sources differ on a number, the episode says so. Allegations are attributed and legal outcomes are stated by date.

In 1998, police detained Donald "Zeeks" Phipps. Supporters surrounded the Central Police Station and downtown Kingston was thrown into days of unrest in which four people, including two police officers, were killed. Then police brought Zeeks onto a balcony and handed him a bullhorn. He told the crowd to leave, and they left.Episode 2 of Jamaican Don of All Dons weighs Zeeks's claim. Not an extradition battle or an overseas empire, but something more local: the ability to command loyalty in one section of downtown Kingston, where Matthews Lane became his name and his name became Matthews Lane. We look at what that loyalty was made of, and why visible support in a community run by an armed authority can mean several things at once.#Jamaica #TrueCrime #JamaicanHistory

Before Dudus, there was Jim Brown.Lester Lloyd Coke, known as Jim Brown, was the Tivoli Gardens area leader whom court-linked testimony later described as the Jamaican leader of the Shower Posse. The United States sought his extradition. In February 1992, while he was still in Jamaica awaiting that extradition, he died in a fire at the General Penitentiary in Kingston, before any American court could test the case against him.In Episode 1 of Jamaican Don of All Dons, we ask what his power was actually made of: Tivoli Gardens, the Shower Posse, the Coke family succession, and a mural that still called him "Don of Dons." There are no scores and no verdict here, only the evidence for why his name belongs in the conversation.Allegations are presented as allegations. Unless the episode says a court found something, nothing in it is a court finding.