GEORGE WESTERMAN COLLECTION

     Migration, the voluntary and involuntary
movement of people from one geographic area to
another, has been a central theme in African
diasporan history and culture.  Each mass migration
of African peoples from one society to another has
had significant conomic, political and cultural
impacts on the receiving society.  Nowhere in the
Americas has this been more clear than in
twentieth-century Panama where thousands of blacks
from Jamaica, Barbados and other Caribbean islands
were recruited to work building the Panama Canal.
The George Westerman Collection includes some of
the most extensive documentation of this migration
and its aftermath.

     George Washington Lionel Westerman,
(1910-1988) was a distinguished, multi-talented
West Indian Panamanian.  A journalist, editor,
sociologist, historian, diplomat, community leader
and impresario, he was an Ambassador in the Panama
delegation to the United Nations from 1956-1960 and
publisher and editor of the Panama Tribune from
1959-1973.  He had previously served as a sports
editor, associate editor, and columnist for the
Panama Tribune as well as a columnist for the
Panama American and special correspondent for the
Miami Herald and Dix Papers of Ohio.  In addition
to his newspaper articles, Westerman authored
numerous pamphlets on historical, social, and
racial themes, interpreting West Indian Panamanian
history and challenging the systems of racial
segregation that dominated Panamanian society.
During the 1950s, he organized a series of concerts
in Panama that featured leading African American
artists such as Marian Anderson, Dorothy Maynor,
Paul Robeson and Philippa Schuyler, among others.

     In addition to his duties at the United
Nations, Ambassador Westerman was an official
Panamanian representative at the independence
celebrations of Togo, the Cameroons, and Jamaica,
as well as the inaugural ceremonies of Presidents
Tubman of Liberia and Kennedy of the U.S.A.

     The George Westerman Collection includes
correspondence, photographs, program bills and
files on leading African American artists who
appeared in the Westerman Concert Series.
Westerman's research files include original
documents, research notes and drafts of manuscripts
on the historical and cultural dimensions of the
West Indian presence in Panama including the
manuscript for his unpublished book Fifty Years of
West Indian Life on the Isthmus of Panama
(1903-1953).  An extensive photograph collection
documents Westerman's personal and professional
careers as well as the history of West Indians in
Panama.  Included is part of the photo archive of
the Panama Tribune.  Westerman's documentation of
events and activities in the West Indian community
include nearly verbatim transcripts of meetings of
labor unions, cultural, political and civic
organizations which he took in shorthand and
transcribed into detailed typewritten accounts.
Research on a biographical directory of leading
African American figures of the 1950s resulted in
extensive correspondence, photographs, resumes and
biographical data on hundreds of African Americans
in all walks of life.  A nearly complete run of the
Panama Tribune (1929-1979) is included in the
Collection.