The American election is now in full swing, and it’s possible that the country will have its first-ever female president. However, Hillary Clinton will not be the first freely elected female president in the Americas. That distinction belongs to Jewish, Chicago-born Janet Rosenberg Jagan.
Born in the south side of Chicago and brought up in an Irish Catholic neighbourhood, Janet and her family were far from being traditionally Jewish. Indeed, in the 1940s, the Rosenbergs changed their name to “Roberts” to avoid the harsh anti-Semitism of the day.
In America in the 1940s, many young Jews eschewed Judaism to take up more esoteric political causes, and Janet was certainly among them. The difference, however, was that once she found communism, it became her life’s work.
During her search for a cause, she met Cheddi Jagan, the son of a Guyanese sugar cane worker. Their mutual attraction was instantaneous and would pave the way for a life of politics, intrigue and struggle for the rest of their days.
Janet’s family could not fathom this interracial union, so uncommon for the day. Despite threats of disassociation from the family, Cheddi and Janet were married in the late summer of 1943 and moved shortly thereafter to what was then British Guyana. Cheddi, who was trained as a dentist, opened up a practice where Janet administered his office.
Guyana of the day was one of the poorest British colonies in the Americas. Its population base was virtually divided between Africans who were forcibly brought to the colony as slaves and those coming from India who were brought over as indentured servants to work the sugar cane fields once Britain had freed its slaves in the 1830s.
Cheddi and Janet shared a communist political passion and soon began to work with Guyana’s labour movement. In fact, Janet became instrumental in organizing domestic workers as well as helping to establish the Guyanese Women’s Political and Economic Organization immediately following World War II.
In the 1950s, after Cheddi and Janet helped found the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) of Guyana, its first modern political entity, they entered politics on a full-time national basis. As its secretary-general, Janet developed policy to work toward liberating Guyana from British rule. So successful were Janet and Cheddi that in the 1953 elections, the PPP gained a majority, making Cheddi the chief minister of the country.
This did not last long. Guyana’s British overlords nullified the election results because of the PPP’s communist inclination, and shortly thereafter, both Janet and Cheddi were jailed as political prisoners.
Their battle did not stop, and by 1957, Cheddi was once again elected chief minister, while Janet was chosen for the role of labour, health and housing minister.
It was a tumultuous time. Significant controversies among the fledgling PPP led to a division in which a new party was formed representing the African part of Guyana. Yet, despite violence and political strife, Janet worked diligently in the attempt to better her people’s health, creating clinics for pregnant women who could not afford care, and took on the real need to increase workers’ pay and improve conditions.
Always forces to be reckoned with, Cheddi and Janet remained strong players within the PPP. In 1992, in what historians believe were the first truly free elections held in Guyana since it won its freedom from Britain in 1966, Cheddi was elected president of Guyana. Janet was appointed Guyanese ambassador to the United Nations, where she chaired the national commission on children’s rights.
In 1997, after Cheddi’s death, Janet became the first female prime minister of Guyana, and shortly thereafter, she was the first-ever American Jewish woman to attain the position of elected president in all of the Americas.
My colleague at Mosaic Institute, Rachel Mansell, rounded out the story of Janet Rosenberg Jagan, her great-aunt, explaining that she died in March 2009, having maintained to her dying day a love and commitment to her adopted country, Guyana.