Dr. Claudius Roland Walker, M.D. – Bain Town

Claudius Roland Walker, MD, was an extraordinarily brilliant man who was born and lived most of his life in Bain Town.   He was born on 6^th May 1897, and he was an only child.  His parents were Claudius F. and Patience Walker (nee Robinson).  He was an accomplished musician who played the organ, piano and double bass, and he was a linguist who spoke Spanish, French and German.  He also taught mathematics and established the Bahamas Technical Institute, an evening school for adults.  Classes were held at St. Agnes Schoolroom.

He attended the Boys’ Central School in Nassau and he furthered his education at the Rhodes Preparatory School and College of Liberal Arts in New York.  He obtained a Bachelor of Science Degree from Howard, Washington, D.C.   It was in a German class at Howard University that he met Mabel Holloway of Greensville, South Carolina. He subsequently entered Meharry medical School in Nashville, Tennessee and graduated in 1929.

Aside from all of his professional and academic accomplishments, Dr. Walker was also a builder and he constructed the Reinhard Hotel at the corner of Blue Hill Road to accommodate black visitors who were not allowed to stay in the established hotels because of race discrimination.  In the late thirties he moved his medical office which was located in rooms on the South side of his home. He later moved his practice to the ground floor of the hotel where there was also a pharmacy.

The Reinhard Hotel was also the venue for wedding receptions and other social events.   David and Annette Cartwright, who were married at St. Agnes Church, are pictured at right at their wedding reception at the Reinhard Hotel in 1961.   The hotel was also the headquarters for the Progressive Liberal party (PLP) leading up to the historic 1967 elections.  I was working in the office as a volunteer and this is where I first met Arthur Foulkes and Oswald Pyfrom who were in charge of the headquarters office. 

In the aftermath of the Burma Road Riot on 1^st June 1942, Dr. Walker was chosen by The Bahamas Federation of Labour to be its spokesman to address the Duke of Windsor’s Committee on behalf of the Bahamian workers.  In his book, “The Faith That Moved the Mountain”, Sir Randol Fawkes quotes Dr.  Walker as he spoke on 3^rd June 1943:

“We Bahamians are the sons and grandsons, the daughters and granddaughters of those who arrived.  We seek to reclaim that which was snatched from us over 300 years ago – our dignity and self-respect as human beings.

“During the interval between then and now, we have become the most brainwashed people in the world.  You see, teachers and missionaries did not tell us that there was a period in ancient history when Rome was barbarous and Greece slept but Africa flourished with its own governments, economic systems, and military forces, religious and social organisations.  Indeed, in the very beginnings of mankind, the African nation of Egypt occupied a central role in world history.

“We were taught that our ancestors contributed nothing to the advancement of civilization.  Yet it was common knowledge that Africans were the first to practice agriculture – the first of the cultures – along the banks of the Niger River. Neither did they tell my people, Gentlemen, that the earliest known pottery was created in Africa more than thirty thousand years ago, during the Paleolithic (stone) age.

“…It is a psychological truism that an oppressed and rejected people soon come to see themselves through the eyes of the oppressors.  As a result, the black man soon learned to hate himself and others in his own race.”

Former Deputy Prime Minister and later Governor General A.D. Hanna describes Dr. Walker as the bravest man he ever knew considering the fact that, during the darkest days of discrimination, he fought alone against Bay street in his efforts to improve the condition of blacks in The Bahamas.  He kept the people informed by producing his newspaper, The Voice, and gave it away if they could not afford to pay.  In hindsight, AD thinks that the PLP should have embraced Dr. Walker.

During the forties and fifties, Dr. Walker was one of the representatives for the Southern District of New Providence in the House of Assembly. He pushed for the establishment of the Southern Public Library which took place in 1951. The library is located on the North side of the Southern Recreation Grounds.  In 2004 the name was changed to The Lillian G. Weir-Coakley Public Library in honour of the long time librarian who assisted generations of Bahamians in their quest for knowledge.

Mrs. Walker was also an active member of and Secretary in the Elks Lodge, Curfew Temple.

Dr. Walker and Daddy were childhood neighbours and friends in Bain Town. They were both the only child of their parents, attended St. Agnes Church and played the organ, and they were known as the “Princes of Hospital Lane.”   Claudius Walker was also a tailor.  When his children were going off to college he made his sons’ suits and the winter coats for his daughters.

Dr. Walker was the leader in the redevelopment of Scottish Free Masonry in The Bahamas in 1964.  He travelled to Scotland to obtain permission to start the Lodge of St. Michael which initially fell under the jurisdiction of the Jamaican Lodge.  Some of the founding members of St. Michael’s Lodge were my uncle, Charles Butler, Ulric J. Mortimer, Sr., Lester J. Mortimer, Arthur Richardson, Mark Murray and Sidney Whitfield, the latter being the only survivor of the names mentioned.

Two schools, C. R. Walker Senior High and the Mabel Walker Primary School were named in honour of Dr. & Mrs. Walker.  The Teachers’ Union Hall is also named in honour of Mabel Walker.