Rosie Douglas

The Hon. Roosevelt ("Rosie") Bernard Douglas (15 October 1941 – 1 October 2000), was a black power activist, human rights agitator and international statesman. In 2000 he became the fifth Prime Minister of the Caribbean island of Dominica holding the office for eight months, from 3 February 2000 until his sudden death later that year at the age of 58.

Rosie Douglas was the son of the late Robert Bernard Douglas, a wealthy businessman, coconut farmer, and conservative politician who named his boys after world statesmen (he had brothers named Eisenhower, Atlee, and Adenauer).

He was schooled in Dominica's capital, Roseau, before being accepted to study agriculture at the Ontario Agricultural College in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. However, after growing frustrated with the bureaucratic delays in obtaining his visa to enter Canada, he made a phone call to then Canadian Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker. Mr. Diefenbaker was able to assist Douglas, 18 at the time, and sent local MP Bruce Robinson to collect him at the airport. Douglas became involved in politics as a member of the young Conservative Party of Canada, under the guidance of the right honourable John Diefenbaker. Upon completing his studies in Agriculture, he moved to Montreal where he enrolled in political science at Sir George Williams University.

While attending Sir George Williams, Douglas, who worked as a teachers assistant in the Political Science Department, became President of the Conservative Student Union becoming friends with Canadian student leaders including Pierre Trudeau and Rene Levesque. Douglas used his platform within the Tory Party to advocate on behalf of Caribbean women who came to Canada under the domestic scheme, better housing conditions for blacks living in substandard conditions, particularly in North Preston, Nova Scotia, equal employment opportunities for blacks in Canada, and addressing racism in Canada as part of the Tories' national platform. However, Douglas left the conservatives when national student leader Joe Clark refused to address the issue of racism on a national level. His political views also changed radically when he went to live on Indian reserves in Quebec, and visited Nova Scotia's black communities in the 1960s. The impoverished conditions of black people there affected him to the point he decided "there and then" that he would devote his life to improving the lot of black people around the world. By the late 1960s, after hearing Martin Luther King speak at the Massey Lectures at the University of Toronto, Douglas had become an active supporter of the civil rights movement taking place in the United States, befriending the likes of King and Stokley Carmichael.

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