THE COLLINS WALL
THE COLLINS WALL
By: Michael Elijah Muhammad Clare
Lemme tell you this the way it get told by my Mommy dem from my daddy, not from no book, but how it pass down from mouth to ear, to Bahama Drama himself and now to you all.
A very long time ago Nassau wasn’t like how you see it now of course.
Back in the 1930s, when times was hard all over the world, the Great depression I think it was called.
There was a wealthy white merchant man named Ralph Collins. A very big well known trader. A Money man. The kind who had say in how things got done in Nassau at the time.
They say around 1934, he had fully completed the construction of what would later be named Collins wall.
About 10 feet high, stretching near 2 miles long, running right along what people now call Collins Avenue. Straight through the land like a cut.
And in some parts they fashioned broken bottles and nails to the top of the wall for extra reinforcement for blacks back then. Something that is probably still present at many parts of the Collins wall today!
Now they ain’t tell people straight up back then that this very long wall was for separating Black and white, hell no!
They actually said later that it was for work, for “helping the poor” for “organizing land.”
Black Bahamians back then were indeed poor people, but not stupid, even though 6th. grade was the highest level of public schools back then.
Everybody knew what that wall was doing.
On one side was opportunity.
On the other side was poverty and struggle.
From the 1930s straight into the 1960s, that wall stood there as another law of the Bahamas, even though it wasn’t written in the law it was violently enforced by any means necessary by white residence of the area and police alike back then.
You could get a bloody head or go missing if you broke these rules. Don’t be caught behind the wall after dark.
You ain’t supposed to be on the other side.
Daytime, yeah, you could cross, go work, clean, serve, do what you had to do.
But when evening come?
You better head back Over-the-Hill.
Because if you didn’t… you could find trouble.
Police trouble.
Man trouble.
Real trouble.
You go missing forever!
But the wall ain’t even have proper way through for the very people who needed it.
So what they did?
They bring ladders.
Yes, sir.
Every morning, people used to line up, men first, sometimes women right behind, lifting them old wooden ladders, leaning it up against that big fat concrete wall.
And one by one…
They climb.
Work on one side.
Home on the other.
And the only thing connecting the two?
A piece of wood… and balance.
Now listen close… because this the part people don’t like to talk too loud about.
This happened somewhere in the late 1930s, not long after the wall get put up.
There was a young black Bahamian woman 23 years old who many say was from Bain and Grants Town.
She was about 5 months Pregnant at the time.
Trying to make it to work that morning, same like everybody else. Because back then, belly or no belly, you still had to eat, especially coming from a poor family.
She reach by the ladder that morning.
Take her time.
Careful, they say.
One step… next step…
Holding tight.
People watching, some already over, some waiting their turn.
And then…
Something give way.
Some say the ladder shift.
Some say her foot slip.
But what everybody agree on?
She fall.
From high up on that wall… straight down.
Hard.
Too hard!
And right there…
She lose the baby.
They said that she was carrying twin girls.
No big report ever happened.
No inquiry.
No justice.
No real police involvement.
Just people whispering still to afraid of the laws of the Bahamas for black Bahamians back then.
The following day black workers went right back to climbing that same wall the next morning.
Because what else they could do?
That wall stand there for years after that.
Through the 1940s,
through the 1950s,
right up until things start changing in the 1960s.
People begin pushing back.
Voices got louder.
And little by little…
That wall get open up in some places.
Roads cut through it.
People start passing through where they once had to climb.
And even today…
That wall ain’t gone.
Not completely.
They open it up in some parts, yes, roads running through it now, people moving like it was always meant to be that way.
But pieces of it still standing for miles.
Quiet.
Solid.
Like it watching everything still.
But even now…
Old Bahamians maybe in their 80’s and above could still point to where it used to be sealed up and the young girl fell from the ladders one tragic morning.
They’re going to always mention all the ladders for sure though.
And they’re going to always mention that woman.
Because that story ain’t just about a wall.
It’s about what people had to go through…
Just to reach work and make it back home.
It’s been often said that, If you sat by the wall where the young black girl lost the twin babies that morning, at the Collins avenue wall after midnight, you’d hear strange baby crying noises radiating through the Collins avenue walls themselves.
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