Visiting former UBAD president, Evan X Hyde, at the Hyde family home on West Canal Street this morning was William Livingston, 35, the only son of a UBAD legend, the late Robert “Rasta” Livingston. William was accompanied by his aunt, Helen Westby (Robert Livingston’s sister), a former teacher at Holy Redeemer School. William Livingston, the godson of Galento X Neal, lives in New York City. He returned to New York Friday afternoon.
Robert Livingston was a woodwork teacher at Holy Redeemer Boys School in the 1960’s when he suffered a terrible hip injury and was hospitalized for treatment in Jamaica. His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie I, had made a visit to Kingston in 1966 which caused the Rastafarian movement to explode in size and energy in Jamaica. It is not known if Livingston was in Jamaica when His Imperial Majesty visited, or shortly thereafter, but whatever the case, Robert Livingston became Belize’s first known Rasta.
At the beginning of 1969, Livingston was the Secretary-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Belize City, the executive of which included Nurses Vivian Seay and Cleopatra White, Elfreda Reyes, and Percival Innis at the time. It was Robert Livingston who pressed Evan X Hyde to leave the Ad Hoc Committee and begin lecturing at Liberty Hall in early January of 1969. These lectures led to the birth of the United Black Association for Development (UBAD) on February 9, 1969.