The One Love Peace Concert, 1978: The Night Two Rival Leaders Held Hands
The Griot | Stories Roots LegacyShow Notes
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.
More from The Griot | Stories Roots Legacy
Why did an oilfield strike in southern Trinidad spread into a colony-wide confrontation over wages, race, and political power? Sources: Trinidad and Tobago National Archives; Butler Papers; Commission of Inquiry into the Disturbances in Trinidad, 1937; British Colonial Office reports; Trinidad Guardian archive
How did a few minutes of shaking destroy Jamaica’s commercial capital and expose the limits of colonial disaster response? Sources: Jamaica Gleaner archive; United States Geological Survey historical earthquake records; Jamaica Legislative Council papers; British Colonial Office dispatches; National Library of Jamaica
How did strikes by sugar workers in 1938 become the turning point that created Jamaica’s modern labor movement and accelerated self-government? Sources: Jamaica Labour Department reports; Jamaica Gleaner archive; UK Colonial Office reports; National Library of Jamaica; Norman Manley papers
How did enslaved workers in Demerara organize across plantations, and why did the colonial government respond with military force and mass executions? Sources: British Parliamentary Papers; Colonial Office records; Guyana National Archives; The Missionary Register; Emilia Viotti da Costa, Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood
How did an American religious community in Guyana become the site of the largest mass death in modern Caribbean history? Sources: U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee hearings; Guyana government investigative records; FBI Jonestown files; Guyana National Archives; The New York Times contemporaneous reporting