Grange hails late Beverley Hall-Alleyne for contributions to Jamaican culture

Culture Minister Olivia Grange has hailed the late Beverley Hall-Alleyne for her pioneering research on the influence of West African languages on Jamaican culture and her role in shaping cultural institutions.

Hall-Alleyne, a linguist, anthropologist, and former executive director of the Institute of Jamaica (IOJ) from 1985 to 1993, died last week. She was 78. 

Noting her contributions to African-Jamaican culture, teaching, and institution building, Grange pointed out that Hall-Alleyne was the founding director/research fellow at the African Caribbean Institute of Jamaica in 1974. The institute was later integrated into the Jamaica Memory Bank, an IOJ division. 

"Hall-Alleyne's work served to provide critical evidence of African retention in Jamaican culture at a time when a generation of Jamaicans were progressing from the attainment of political Independence,” the minister said in a statement Tuesday. 

Grange said Hall-Alleyne served on several boards of the IOJ, Jamaica's premier cultural agency, including the institute's Publications Limited and the National Gallery of Jamaica. 

The late author was also a member of the UNESCO Culture Advisory Committee and served on the boards of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics, the Bolivarian Society of Jamaica, for which she was president, the Jamaica Memory Bank Project, the Mico Museum Board, and the Jamaica Sports Hall of Fame.

“I wish to express my sincere condolences to the staff of the Institute of Jamaica and to her family, especially her son Taji, and her twin daughters Micha and Malene," Grange said. 

Former head of the Institute of Jamaica, Beverley Hall-Alleyne, dies

Two of Hall-Alleyne's celebrated works include Asante Kotoko: The Maroons of Jamaica, a 1982 publication that explores links between the Maroons and the Asante/Akan people, and Language Maintenance and Language Death in the Caribbean, which she co-wrote with her husband and pioneering Caribbean linguist Mervyn Alleyne. He died in 2016. 

She taught Spanish, Twi and Swahili, at The University of the West Indies. 

Hall-Alleyne's other contributions included being the director of human resources at Air Jamaica, the former national airline, and as Group Manager, Human Resources & Public Relations in the Massy Group.

Her tenure at the airline has been noted for its diversification of the workforce, mainly through the increased hiring of black Jamaicans.

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