History has been made in England after three Black Caribbean women held prestigious ceremonial roles during the coronation of King Charles III in London over the weekend.
Valerie Ann Amos, a Guyanese-British politician and diplomat; Floella Benjamin, a Trinidadian-British politician and businesswoman and Rev. Rose Hudson-Wilkin, a Jamaican-British Anglican prelate were part of a sacred ritual at Westminster Abbey. The two former hold British nobility ranks.
The women are originally from Trinidad and Tobago’s town of Pointe-A-Pierre, Guyana’s city of Georgetown and Jamaica’s city of Montego Bay, respectively. Each of the three countries was once colonies that obtained independence from the British Empire.
Another Black woman, Baroness Amos of Brondesbury, had already made history when she was advanced to the Order of the Garter in 2022, making her the first Black woman to serve in a British cabinet and become leader of the House of Lords.
At the time, King Charles assigned Amos, 73, to join the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby during the act of acknowledgment at the beginning of the coronation ceremony. She held The Sovereign’s Sceptre with Dove, a silver and gold rod adorned with the white dove of the Holy Ghost.
The invaluable artifact has rose-colored diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and spinels encrusted on it. It is also known by connoisseurs as “the Rod of Equity and Mercy” because it denotes the king’s spiritual role. Charles II held the same vestige during his 1661 coronation ceremony.
Furthermore, Baroness Benjamin of Beckenham, the chair of the Windrush Commemoration Committee, made history when she became the first Black actress to become a peer in the House of Lords in 2010. The king delegated her to carry the Sovereign’s Sceptre with Cross.
And then there is Hudson-Wilkin, who made British history when the King entrusted her to become a bishop in the Church of England in 2019, with The Queen Consort’s Rod with Dove. She was the first Black woman to do so.
According to Local 10 News, the history is ironic. “The royal relics that the three Black women held during Charles III’s coronation were supplied to the royal family by Robert Vyner, who was involved in, and benefitted from, the transatlantic slave trade, as a signatory of the Royal African Charter in 1672.”
