Quotes from Kevin Jackson

Most destructive of all to black self-esteem has been the ideology of branqueamento or whitening. This theory was dreamed up in the 1920s to stop Brazil becoming a predominantly black country. White immigration from Europe was encouraged to stem the black tide. The black in Brazil will disappear within 70 years, said one congressman in 1923.

For a man burning to venture into the unknown, this spell of enforced idleness was torment.

The passengers huddled in their wet bedding, salt water streaming down the cabin walls, and prayed for deliverance.

They fell into two groups: the Saints (or in the spelling of their day, 'Saincts'), ideological, theological migrants, and the Strangers, who had compelling reasons of their own for risking their lives at sea. Few if any of the Strangers were driven by a calling to spread the Gospel; for the most part they simply hoped that they would fare better in the new world.

slithered across the slippery decks, which flew up and plunged down below their

have been sailing with almost bare poles

Each adult was issued with a daily allowance of a pound of ship's biscuit, a pound of butter, and half a pound of cheese, all to be washed down with a gallon of (weak) ale. In addition, each passenger was given two pounds of salt beef or pork every week, as well as a ration of salted cod and dried peas.

For one thing, they did not call themselves Pilgrims (that term was not widely used until about 1840). Nor were they fleeing immediate persecution.

Put this another way: she was only about twelve feet longer than a tennis court. And she had been designed not as a passenger ship, but for cargo.

It is the irony of understanding that the more you know the less you comprehend.

It is the paradox of truly perceiving that the more you do the less effective you are, and the more you hide the more you show.

It pleased God that he caught hold of the topsail halyards which hung overboard and ran out at length. Yet he held his hold (though he was sundry fathoms under water) till he was hauled up by the same rope to the brim of the water, and then with a boat hook and other means got into the ship again and his life saved.

The Atlantic voyage of Mayflower was not the first British trip to the new world. Henry VII had financed two expeditions in 1497 and 1498, which grabbed Chesapeake Bay and Newfoundland for His Majesty. But it was not until the last quarter of the sixteenth century, under Elizabeth, that England set about a more systematic and determined settlement of the new world. It was Elizabeth's personal astrologer and court magus, Dr John Dee, who coined the term 'British Empire'.

I discovered, though unconsciously and insensibly, that the pleasure of observing and reasoning was a much higher one than that of skill and sport. The primeval instincts of the barbarian slowly yielded to the acquired tastes of the civilized man.

Every citizen should 'remain free in his religion, and no man be molested or questioned on the subject of Divine worship'.

There was double cause for celebration that night: this windfall of corn, and another birth. Mistress Susana White had produced a baby son, the first of the colonists' children to be born on American soil. They christened him Peregrine: 'pilgrim'.