Winston Bernard Coard was born on 10 August 1944 and is a Grenadian politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister in the People's Revolutionary Government of the New Jewel Movement.
19 Facts About Bernard Coard
1.
2.
In 1983, Coard launched a coup within the PRG and briefly took power until he was himself deposed by General Hudson Austin.
3.
Bernard Coard, the son of Frederick McDermott Coard and Flora Fleming, was born in Victoria, Grenada.
4.
Bernard Coard is connected to Grenada's prestigious Cenac family: a first cousin of the Honorable Justice Dunbar Cenac of the Eastern Caribbean High Court, and a nephew of Dennis Vivian Cenac, a former solicitor in the West Indies Associated States Supreme Court.
5.
Bernard Coard was attending the Grenada Boys' Secondary School when he met Maurice Bishop, who was then attending Presentation Brothers' College.
6.
Bernard Coard left Grenada for the United States, where he studied sociology and economics at Brandeis University and joined the Communist Party USA.
7.
That year, he married his wife Phyllis while they were students in England, and Bernard Coard joined the Communist Party of Great Britain.
8.
Bernard Coard worked for two years as a schoolteacher in London and ran several youth organisations in South London.
9.
Bernard Coard's thesis was widely cited, even long after his revolutionary career, as a summary of the role of institutional racism in the relationship between race and intelligence.
10.
Bernard Coard lectured from 1974 to 1976 at the Mona, Jamaica campus of the University of the West Indies.
11.
In January 1974, Bernard Coard returned to Grenada which was then in the midst of a popular uprising against the government of Prime Minister Eric Gairy.
12.
Bernard Coard joined the New Jewel Movement, the left-wing organization co-founded by his childhood friend Maurice Bishop.
13.
Bernard Coard ran for and won a parliamentary seat in St George's in the 1976 elections.
14.
In 1980, Bernard Coard headed a delegation to Moscow to formalize Grenada's relations with the Soviet Union.
15.
Bernard Coard served as the PRG's Minister of Finance, Trade and Industry, as well as the Deputy Prime Minister under Bishop.
16.
Bernard Coard was quickly ousted by General Hudson Austin, who nominally ruled the country for six days.
17.
Bernard Coard was sentenced to death, but this was commuted to life imprisonment in 1991.
18.
Bernard Coard served his sentence in Richmond Hill Prison, where he was engaged in teaching and instructing fellow inmates in many subjects, including economics and sociology.
19.
In September 2004, the prison in which he was held was damaged by Hurricane Ivan and many inmates took the opportunity to flee, but Bernard Coard said he chose not to escape, saying he would not leave until his name was cleared.