evon blake journalist

It was Christmas Eve 1941. A man stood on the corner of King and Har-bour Streets in Downtown Kingston, selling copies of a new magazine he had just published, SPOTLIGHT News Magazine. Tired of his job as a Gleaner writer and with a newborn daughter and wife to feed, Evon Blake was call-ing on all the friends he had worked with as a journalist and, before that, as a policeman, to support his independent venture. One by one, copies of SPOTLIGHT sold out. Every month for the next 25 years, Evon Blake brought an edition of SPOTLIGHT to the streets and to Kingston's readers. Sold by subscriptions that posted copies to homes and businesses, or on the shelves of his friend Ferdie Sangster's bookstore downstairs his Harbour Street office, SPOTLIGHT became the Time Magazine of Jamaica and the West Indies. As Jamaica grew from World War 2, the birth of the trade union and political movements, Federation and Independence, SPOTLIGHT became the acknowledged record of independent news and a beacon of information about the people and events of the region. Blake was a friend of the leading West Indies politicians such as Manley, Bustamante, Grantley Adams, Brad-shaw, Marryshaw and Jagan, and businessmen Issa, Matalon, Desnoes, McCo-nnell and Sharpe. SPOTLIGHT was the first Jamaican publication invited to Cuba after Fidel Castro's revolution, the first to feature the personalities and politics of the West Indies Federation, the first to publish a cover story on the Rasta-fari movement (1962). Blake was no shrinking violet, but a fearless journal-ist whose financial independence gave him power to attack or praise as he wished. He shocked Jamaica when he featured himself as Man of the Year in one of the popular December issues, and his divorce made news when he hired the island’s best lawyer Norman Manley to gain custody of his two pre-teen daughters.