Remembering with deep gratitude the life and work of Eva Naomi Hodgson, who on this day, October 9, 2024, would have celebrated her 100th birthday.

As Bermuda’s leading civil rights campaigner and racial justice activist for almost 80 years, Dr Hodgson was a woman who truly led a purpose-driven life. Even though she was one of the most educated women of her day, she was denied professional opportunities that went to persons with far less education and experience. She was seen as a threat to the status quo and experienced the economic violence that was visited on those who would not be silent about the island’s economic inequity and social separation.

Since her teens, she railed against the injustices endured by her people in Bermuda’s segregated society and was deeply frustrated and angry at the indignities and insults that continued to be heaped on Black Bermudians. Those in power saw her as a troublemaker, but her incisive and persistent voice for change could not be silenced. She soon felt the backlash and economic pressures placed on a young, Black woman who dared to raise her voice — but still she persisted.

She understood the premise of a purpose-driven life, author Rick Warren said: “Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you. Don’t waste your pain; use it to help others.”

The 1950s saw her begin writing for the Bermuda Recorder — a Black-owned newspaper — using her keen intellect to publicly express her concerns for the racism and social injustices she witnessed that were so deeply entrenched and widespread in Bermuda. Later in life, she became increasingly well known, and often maligned by the White community, for her Letters to the Editor and opinion pieces in newspapers about the racism that continued to affect the Black community. But still she persisted.

We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.

Dr Hodgson has inspired a generation of activists and is honoured and revered by many in the social justice community for her lifelong courage and dedication. As she said in her own words, “Each generation has to fight for its own freedom … Freedom is not free.”

Dr Hodgson’s intellect, persistence, love and dedication to her people never wavered, and her decades-long fight for racial justice continued right up until her death on May 29, 2020 at the age of 95. As Michael Eric Dyson, American author, academic and Baptist minister, said, “Justice is what love sounds like in public.”

• Lynne Winfield is a past president of the antiracism advocacy group Citizens Uprooting Racism in Bermuda