The editors selected a representative number of interviews that are eyewitness accounts of social and economic conditions in Jamaica in 1938, as well as of the labour rebellion and the movement for self-government in Jamaica. Dr. Karl Watson and his Third Year students conducted these interviews when the former was attached to the Department of History of the University of the West Indies at Mona.
The editors have converted these interviews into narratives, and presented an overview which places the momentous events described by the interviewees in historical perspective.  These interviews indicate that oral history can be very important in the interpretation of our history, and that it has the capacity to revive the past as people perceived it.  The interviews record, on the historical canvas of an ethnically divided colony, the struggle for nationhood.