A key member of the Progressive Group had the unique role of printing up the flyers for the pressure group to rally the island into action for the landmark Theatre Boycott of 1959.

Gerald Harvey, who would have turned 100 later this month, was also the lone member of the group, which organised under secrecy to campaign against racial segregation in Bermuda, to publicly distribute posters and leaflets for the boycott.

Mr Harvey and his wife, Izola, copied the posters calling for protest in the kitchen of their Somerset home, as part of a challenge to the island’s entrenched segregation.

The demonstration outside cinemas swiftly built into a movement that reshaped Bermuda’s political and social terrain.

“Bermuda was a very prejudiced place at that time — there were certain things we could not do, that we dared not do,” Mr Harvey told The Royal Gazette in a 2015 interview.

Racial segregation was the order of the day from hotels and restaurants to cinemas and the Civil Service, and enforced by an atmosphere of intimidation — including the threat that banks could pull the mortgage of anyone seen as challenging the status quo.

Mr Harvey had been on the receiving end of it, including being ordered out of a hotel because he was Black when he came to meet a friend staying there.

The couple also wanted a better Bermuda for their children. Married in 1955, the couple had two daughters, Donna and Lisa.

The Harveys were instrumental in getting the word out to stand up to segregation.

“We were badly in need of a machine for our group to make posters,” Mrs Harvey recalled. “We knew it would take more than we could make by hand.”

The couple enlisted two tourists to front for them in purchasing the hand-operated rolling press in Hamilton, with Mr Harvey then smuggling the machine home in his taxi.

He released a mass of flyers near City Hall, and word spread swiftly.

On June 15, 1959, as Bermuda marked its 350th anniversary, posters appeared around the island calling on the public to join peaceful protests against segregated theatres.

Cinemas were targeted because Black patrons were made to sit downstairs.

The rallies not only pressured cinemas into ending discrimination, but shamed hotels, guesthouses and churches into following suit.

For decades after the Theatre Boycotts, the Progressive Group remained anonymous until the full group came forward.

The Harveys, along with others in the Progressive Group, were awarded Queen's Certificates and Badges of Honour in 2000, and the legacy of the Theatre Boycott explored in the 2002 documentary When Voices Rise.

Mr Harvey told the Gazette after viewing it: “My eyes watered because it brought back good and bad memories, and I thought, ‘Boy, oh boy, we really did take a risk’.”

Dennis Lister, the Speaker of the House, said on Friday: “Mr Harvey was a pillar in this community in many different ways, a man of substance and a man of principle who quietly fought to bring change to this country.

“He was very quiet in his own way but very meaningful in his contributions.”

• Gerald Ambrose Harvey, one of the island’s activists against segregation in the Progressive Group, was born on September 29, 1923. He died on September 17, 2023, aged 99