Flying high until the end

Seven years ago while doing interviews with former beauty queens for the “Countdown to Miss Universe” which was being hosted by Trinidad and Tobago, one of the first persons I interviewed was this dignified and gracious woman who broke colour barriers in this country, yet was never arrogant or overbearing.

The one which affected my own life was on January 23, 1956, Pearl was the first black flight attendant hired by not only British West Indian Airways but by any international carrier, with the exception of Asia. Pearl was followed by so many of us who would not have stood a chance of a snowball in hell to become a member of BWIA’s cabin crew, had she not fearlessly made that first step.

For some years it still was not all plain sailing, but with seniors like Pearl it was easy for us to “elect” not to be rostered for flights into Miami and Bermuda where in the late 50s, because of segregation, the black hostesses would have had to overnight in separate hotels to the whites.

Discrimination was still the order of the day. But then as Pearl said in our interview in April 1999: “I really did not realise what was involved as far as all that lot (the BWIA cabin crews) were concerned, they were really, really nasty but it did not affect me.

The reason being I have always felt secure in who I am and thought to hell with them. I was asked to do a job and was going to do it to the best of my ability. I did not need to be friends with them, and above all I never asked to join BWIA.

I was asked which was more than they could say. When I started, some nearly lost their jobs because they refused to train me because they did not like the idea of the colour being mixed up. I will never forget Pauline Fitzgerald, she agreed to do the training. I was happy because she was one of the best hostesses Bee Wee ever had.”

Marshall-Beard was also the first black woman to enter the Jaycee Carnival Queen Show in 1950, and was runner-up to Marion Halfhide-Borde.

“A lot of people felt I had been robbed because one of the judges, Lady Wooding’s excuse was that at the time New York was not ready for a black queen and that was the first prize.”

Ironically, this charming woman was to take New York by storm some years later when she landed at John F Kennedy airport as a member of the cabin crew on a British West Indian aircraft.

Like the BWIA issue, said Pearl, “the important thing is that I have always known who I am so when you get into situations like those two, and it seems difficult, it is not. It is just that I was put into these situations because it was felt I was capable of handling them.” And this she did indeed even when it became a political debate and the late Dr Eric Williams discussed it on a political platform in Woodford Square. He was very, very annoyed about it but it just never bothered Pearl. So magnanimous was this woman that after driving around town on Carnival Monday with the winning queen, with people hanging onto the jeep throwing remarks at Halfhide, said Pearl “I was very embarrassed for her, she was not to be blamed and so I did not go back on Tuesday.”

On her first flight into New York in 1957, Pearl was regally received at John F Kennedy airport. Two thousand people, television cameras, reporters and photographers, turned up at the airport to welcome her. She felt that “They came out of curiosity. The interest of the black American was that I was somebody who was their colour. Imagine they are fighting for equality and there it is this big jet lands and out comes this black woman. To them I was sort of like a messiah. They were just fighting to find a niche for themselves as black people so they really appreciated my coming there.”

It was the late Sir Hugh Wooding, a former Chief Justice, who together with Beryl Mc Burnie of the Little Carib insisted that she enter the Queen Show: “And these were two people you couldn’t say no to,” said Pearl. “I entered as Miss Little Carib because I was very involved as one of Beryl’s Little Carib dancers, mainly to please Beryl, who did not have any money to spend on fantastic outfits. I paraded first in a pair of shorts and a top and wore a grape coloured three-quarter length dress that I already had, for the formal section.”

Again, it was Sir Hugh, as chairman of Radio Trinidad where Pearl worked, and a director of BWIA who “insisted that they wanted to mix up the colour a bit in the cabin service and were looking for the right person.” Pearl, who I distinctly remember riding along Marli Street to her job at Radio Trinidad where she was happily working as Traffic Manager, and hosting a weekly housewife programme, said: “I was very reluctant, like everything else it was new and I had never thought of it.”