Eva Hodgson

Eva Naomi Hodgson (October 9, 1924 – May 29, 2020) was a Bermudian activist, writer, union leader, and educator. She was known for her efforts to fight racism in Bermuda, from the segregation era into the 21st century.

Hodgson was labeled by some as a troublemaker for her uncompromising views. She served as the first president of the desegregated Amalgamated Bermuda Union of Teachers and wrote four books on the racial and labor history of her country.

Early life and education Hodgson was born in 1924 to a family that had lived in the community of Crawl in Hamilton Parish, Bermuda, for many generations. She was raised in the Brethren evangelical movement and remained a devout Christian throughout her life. Her parents, Harold and Ilene Hodgson, had six children; her mother died young in 1942.

After graduating from the Berkeley Institute, Hodgson attended Queen's University in Ontario on a government scholarship.

After completing her doctoral degree, Hodgson returned to Bermuda and worked as a school guidance counselor. She was then appointed coordinator of oral history and cultural preservation at the Ministry of Education from 1983 to 1990, which involved both overseeing oral history programs and working to introduce human rights into school curricula.

Activism

Labor leader As a teacher at Berkeley in the early 1960s, Hodgson became the president of the Bermuda Union of Teachers, an organization of black teachers. In 1965, the two segregated teachers unions merged, and she became the first president of the Amalgamated Bermuda Union of Teachers.

In the 1960s, she worked on the Committee for Universal Adult Suffrage, which fought for equal voting rights.

Her anti-racist work helped prompt the founding of the Commission for Unity and Racial Equality in the 1990s, which was later folded into the Human Rights Commission.

In 1992, she co-founded the National Association of Reconciliation, an organization that helped force a national conversation on race in the 15 years of its existence. She applied several times to work at Bermuda College and was passed over for less-qualified expatriates.

But Hodgson refused to be satisfied with the end of official segregation and the ascendence to political power of black Bermudians, citing a persistent racist mentality among many Bermudians and continued disparities in the country.

She died in May 2020 at age 95.

Selected works

Second Class Citizens, First Class Men (1963) A Storm in a Teacup—The 1959 Bermuda Theatre Boycott and Its Aftermath (1989) The Joe Mills Story: A Bermuda Labour Legend (1995) The Experience of Racism in Bermuda and in Its Wider Context (2008)