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Get all of our articles here.- Commemoration of Our Ancestors at Corozal Cemetery Nov 2, 2017
- Special for Fathers’s Day- Houston Association of Panamanians
- Black Ethnicity Month 2017 in Panama
- Reunited at Last – The Journey of the Holness Family
- The Fourteenth Panama Jazz Festival Dedicated to Violeta Green
- Joined in Unity to Preserve our Silver Cemeteries
- Finally, Our Silver Cemeteries are Being Cleaned Up
- Los Pana-Zona by Luis E. Cubilla -A Book Review
- Presidential Pardon for Marcus Mosiah Garvey
- Jonathan “Clyde” Parris- Farewell Friend and Baseball Great!
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The Silver People Heritage Foundation 
This is a wonderful resource and I’m glad that I’ve stumbled upon it. I’m writing my family’s history and my two Jamaican Great-grandfathers both worked on the canal, but I can’t find the exact dates. Walter Emmanuel Jones returned to Jamaica after his time there and would tell stories about the horrid conditions for the workers from the West Indians. My other Great-grandfather Alexander Goulbourne, left his son in Jamaica, moved to Panama and never returned. I’d be grateful to find out any information about them that you might be able to direct me to…I tried the American connection to no avail, but that was before I knew about the Gold and Silver rolls. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide me with.
Jacqueline Smartt
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Hi Lydia, do you happen to have a date and place of death for H. N. Walrond, the editor of “The Workman” newspaper 1912-1930.
Also, persons interested in tracing their roots into Barbados might visit the Panama Barbados Ancestry site at Facebook. I have 20 plus years expertise with our Barbados records and can help persons reconnect their families. I have two branches the Brook’s, and Taitt’s who migrated to work on the Canal. My maternal great grandparents were there as well. She returned to Barbados in 1915 to care for her ailing mother, he never returned and I’m still looking for Edward Isley Yearwood’s final resting place.
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Just stumbled onto this site, reading on the Panama Jazz festival. My maternal Grandmother, Lillian Turner Brathwaite is of Barbabian ancestry and I would like to learn more, so I’ll visit the Facebook recommended page, If you have anything to add please dont hesitate to reach out.
Thanks, Mario Peters
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What a great resource. If you have a mailing list, will you please include my email. I’m very interested in the history of the Canal having grown up in Gatun & Coco Solo. Thank you
Mike Rigby
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Hi Mike,
Sure enough! We will include you on our mailing list. You can also click on the Follow button in the lower right hand side of the screen and you will receive updates any time we post a new article.
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I heard about the ‘back punch’ back when working in Balboa Maint. Div with P.C.C. in the early 70s. My West Indian coworkers thought it was done to somehow shorten a man’s lifespan and thereby save the C.Z. the cost of a hard earned pension.
Whenever I get the opportunity to enlighten friends and acquaintances about the Socialist society that was the Panama Canal Zone, I also point out the rigid apartheid system that was enforced in the CZ. In fact, one of my first jobs as a 1st year apprentice was to paint over the ‘Silver’, ‘Gold’ signs above the men’s restrooms. The Silver had no walls between toilets, a wall type urinal (like you see in bars in the Interior) and common wash basins. The Gold restrooms had proper stalls and privacy panel between urinals and individual wash basins.
So glad to see this website and please keep up the hard work of educating folks and preserving history.
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Lars, Thank you for your testimony. It, all the more, validates all our points with regards to the Silver People as an endangered community. Aside from all the outraged reactions to this article about the “Back Punch” on the Panama Canal Zone, we also had a few very skeptical people who questioned whether we were somehow stretching the truth but, with your testimony and several others who were afraid to give names, we are firm in our convictions. Thanks also for giving us the wonderful details of your observations of the times like the restroom set ups for the Silver and Gold Roll.
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Today is a day for amazing discoveries for me. I found my god-father Roberto Reid Jr and this priceless resource. Thank you!!!!!!!! I will spend hours satisfying my desire to learn more about my heritage. God’s answered prayer. Gracias Dios! Deborah Ann McLean-Lewis
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Beautiful Debbie,
You don’t know the joy I feel at our having found each other after so many years. The Lord is indeed Great! Just in time for us to catch up on each other’s lives and for you to understand your people, culture and heritage from Panama. It is for you and your children and grand children that we have set up these web sites. Blessings from Panama. Your God father.
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Seeking any information at all about Panamanian photographer Clarence Rock – any help much appreciated. I also want to thank and congratulate you for this fantastic resource!!!
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Hello! Just wanted to let all of you know that Dickie is sitting here in my kitchen right now! He is way too modest about the history of his father and himself. I am going to try and post a picture.
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Hey Cynthia Brooks:
If you are talking Dickie White of the old Magnolia Building you tell him he don’t have to be so modest with me! Then again happy to know that you and him, and all my old childhood friends up there in yankkee-landia are ok, and that we wish you the best of Blessings. Write me here again.
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I have a relative that died in the Ancon Hospital Jan. 17, 1917, according to The Panama Canal Record. How can I obtain a death certificate?
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Gail, according to the U.S. State Department, where these records reside, you may request a copy with them. Go here for order information. Check for exact fee. For those of you reading this and are interested in obtaining Panama Canal Zone marriage license before 1979 contact:
Civilian Records, National Archives and Records Administration, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD 20740-6001.
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I am cataloguing Ephraim S. Alphonse Reid’s Guaymí dictionary for my university library, currently credited to “Alphonse Reid, Ephraim S., 1896-“. It would be helpful for library catalogues to be able to say when he died. Did he die in 1990? Your biography doesn’t say this explicitly.
[Cataloguer, University of Oklahoma Libraries]
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Dear Friends:
My name is Wesley Jones Alphonse, Rev. Alphonse’s grandson (Adelaide’s son). In response to your query about my grandfather ‘s death, it was 1995. May 31, to be exact. I have the date recorded in my Bible besides John 15:16, his life verse. His ashes were buried in his beloved Cusapin on September 5, 1995.
God bless,
Wesley
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Wesley,
Thank you so much for contacting us with that important date. As you can see, your grandfather was greatly beloved by many people and it had us stumped why, after asking around, no one really had an exact date. It is also good to know where his ashes are buried. May the Lord God of Jesus Christ bless you richly for sending us this information.
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Greetings Lydia
I came across This vast wealth of information about Panama and Colon while searching for Black Panamanias for Black History Month. I am so amaze of all the information I am reading up on. It started with The Silver People Chronicles, when I click on a photo of the workers of the Panama Canal. It takes me back to my childhood in Colon, Rainbow City by my aunt Gladys. I don’t know why but I get so emotional reading some of the entries. My maternal grandparents came from Barbados, my father’s mother from Cartagena De Indias, Colombia and is Father from Saint Lucia. Both my parents were born in Panama. I am so happy to find both sites. Thank You for a job well done.
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Denia,
I’m glad you found us and many of our readers express the same feelings of “getting emotional” just reading about those times back when Panama’s society was more imbued with West Indian culture and flavor and, yes, a child’s Paradise. Thanks for leaving your comment.
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How do I make a financial contribution? I could not find any way on your web site to do so via a credit card.
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Thank you for contacting us Mr. Samuels. We’ve sent you a private e-mail with instructions to do so. Again, thank you.
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I am interested in obtaining information on the National Black Ethnic Day and events. I am interesed in visiting Panama during the events. Please forward any information you may have for 2012. I am interested in Black cultural events in the Americas. I have visisted your beautiful country a few years ago and would like to return to learn more about Afro Panamanians. Thank You!
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Mr. Davis,
If what you are referring to is the “Día de La Etnia Negra” in May, you can read this article if you haven’t already done so. The official date is May 30 but during the entire week previous there are many activities throughout Colon and Panama City.
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My grandfather James Glass Cyrus was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Colon in 1933. He was a pharmasist formerly from Grenada and had worked with the American on the Canal, and was a Master of the Masons Lodge. His two children Sybil Beluah Glass Cyrus and a son are also buried there. Can any one tell me how to find out in what condition there graves may be in.
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Linda,
Sorry to be so late in answering. We are really busy with our Silver People Law project and also our Chronicle page. First, if you didn’t already know, Mount Hope is one of the key “Silver” cemeteries on The Silver People Law and it is with good reason. If Corozal Cemetery is in bad shape, Mount Hope is in terrible condition. The times we have gone on field work over there to take pictures of graves and just panoramic pics of the cemetery we have been prevented by the tall grass and the inherent danger in going in it. This was so even though we had to pay three men to hack down the grass and clear the way of possible snakes, and other dangerous hazards. It is truly an odyssey going in there to do anything. So, we didn’t get as many pictures as we would have liked in this vast graveyard. This is the reason for our Foundation and the Law- to have some kind of control over the restoration and preservation of this heritage cemetery. We do, however, charge a fee for looking for specific graves and if found taking a picture. Money goes to Foundation work.
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