In the early 1950s Donald Sangster, finance minister in the Jamaica Labour Party government, planned a celebration of what he called the 300th anniversary of British rule in Jamaica. The idea followed his 1950 visit to New Zealand, where he saw Christchurch mark the centenary of its founding. Historian Howard Johnson wrote that Sangster’s aims were to expand industry by attracting external investment and to increase the tourist trade.
By mid-year Sangster was promoting visits by foreign dignitaries during the tercentenary year. The announced guests included Princess Margaret of England and President Paul Eugène Magloire of Haiti. A Jamaica Historical Society, chaired by Sangster and dominated by British personnel, became the executive committee. It planned a May ceremony at Port Royal to commemorate the British landing at Passage Fort.
The opposition-dominated Kingston and St Andrew Corporation wanted the events to show Jamaica emerging as a nation and Kingston growing as the premier metropolis in the British Caribbean. It proposed honouring national heroes including Marcus Garvey, George William Gordon and JAG Smith. Sangster continued, and in January 1955 said the celebrations would mark 300 years of progress as a junior partner with Britain in her colonial enterprise.
The 12 January 1955 election gave the People’s National Party 18 of 32 seats, so the PNP inherited the planning. Historian Dr Rochelle Rowe wrote that the party promptly changed the plans from a commemoration of three hundred years of British rule to a celebration of Jamaica’s three hundred years as a national entity with a distinctive history, culture and people. The party made a May beauty pageant, meant to show the diversity of the population, the highlight.
Theodore Sealy, the first black editor of The Gleaner, organised that contest after criticising Miss Jamaica for crowning another white winner, Marlene Fenton. The Ten Types Beauty Contest launched in May 1955 under the theme “Every lassie has an equal chance”, with the Jamaica Tourist Board as main sponsor and THE STAR and The Gleaner handling promotion. It toured the island for seven months. The public voted from published photographs, while final judging was private.
The ten titles were Miss Ebony, a Jamaican girl of black complexion; Miss Mahogany, cocoa-brown; Miss Satinwood, coffee-and-milk; Miss Golden Apple, peaches-and-cream; Miss Apple Blossom, of European parentage; Miss Pomegranate, of white-Mediterranean parentage; Miss Sandalwood, of pure Indian parentage; Miss Lotus, of pure Chinese parentage; Miss Jasmine, of part Chinese parentage; and Miss Allspice, of part Indian parentage. The winners were slim and petite, and Miss Ebony was the only darker-skinned woman among them.
Local reaction was positive, and foreign coverage followed. American journalist Edward Scott, writing in The Gleaner on 10 August 1955, called the contest a model of racial tolerance and praised Miss Ebony for entering as “a Jamaican girl of black complexion”. Life and Time ran features. Ebony magazine sent its chief photographer and managing editor. Photographer Marshall Wilson told THE STAR that Jamaica was making an invaluable contribution to better race relations in the United States, and that American visitors found no discrimination in Jamaican hotels or nightclubs.
The pageant was later described as one of the major influences on Jamaica’s motto, “Out of Many, One People”. Ten Types resumed in 1959 and ended in 1963. The Gleaner reported that 6,000 women had photographs taken for entry. In 1962, independence year, Gleaner sportswriter Alva Ramsay publicly urged either a Negro Miss Jamaica or a modified Ten Types with four queens: a Negro girl, a white girl, a Chinese and an Indian. The contest’s later influence included the Miss Jamaica contest started in 1963 within the Jamaica Festival, rebranded in 1975 and continued as the Jamaica Festival Queen Competition.