Content Warning: This episode contains mentions of police brutality

As Sir Eric Gairy’s tenure as head of government continued throughout the 1970’s, the country was on the brink of economic and social collapse. After Bloody Sunday and Bloody Monday occurred, two of the most brutal cases of police brutality in Caribbean history, Eric Gairy was beginning to face opposition from all sides. However of all the oppositions that formed, one stood out: an organised group of young professionals who called themselves the New Jewel Movement. The New Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education, and Liberation was founded in 1973 and  born out of two organisations: MAPS, Movement for Assembly of the People, founded by UK trained attorneys, Maurice Bishop and Kenrick Radix; and JEWEL, Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education, and Liberation founded by US educated economist Unison Whiteman and Sebastian Thomas. By the mid 1970’s, the Marxist Leninist political party was now headed by a group of leftist young professionals: Maurice Bishop, Bernard Coard, Unison Whiteman, Kenrick Radix, Vincent Noel, Hudson Austin, George Lousion, Selwyn Strachan and Jacqueline Creft. With a national grassroots approach to political organising, NJM would attract the support of the poor, youth, women and members of the Rastafari community in Grenada; and by 1977, would position themselves as the main opposition party on the island.

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