Grandpa Was a Scotsman

St. George's narrow white streets murmured. Harrington Sound's blue-green waters were vexed. Paget's vegetable patches and Somerset's coves were not as peaceful as they looked. The reason was an ad in the Bermuda Royal Gazette. It said:

"I, Edgar Fitzgerald Gordon, Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery of Edinburgh University, President General of the Bermuda Industrial Union, President of the Progressive Bermuda League and Member of Parliament for St. George's, hereby declare that from henceforth I shall be known as Mazumbo."

Bland, well-dressed Mazumbo, leader of 2,000 politically conscious Negro workers, had taken his new name in protest against discrimination by a Bermuda newspaper; it prefixed "Mr." to the names of white members of Bermuda's Parliament (second oldest in the world), but called him simply Gordon. At his Hamilton home, Mazumbo lolled beside the Mimeograph machine in the living room, thinking up ways to needle Bermuda's whites who opposed his drive for better wages for Bermuda's Negroes.

Asked why he had changed names, Mazumbo explained:

"The name Gordon, which I inherited, reminds me very painfully that some Scotsman in some other age compelled a grandmother of mine to submit to his desires. In Bermuda I am black and treated as Bermuda treats the black people. So I want to be called by a name that belongs to my race and requires no prefix."

About the origin of his new name, Mazumbo was more secretive. At first he refused to reveal it. Growled one fellow Parliamentarian: "I won't call him Mazumbo until I know what it means. I might be calling him 'God of white men.' "

This week Mazumbo let the cat out of the bag. His new name, he declared, was that of a famous West African chieftain, who had once been received by Queen Victoria. Said socially conscious Mazumbo of his socially accepted namesake: "The British Royal Family knows quite a bit about him."

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