Jessica Elleisse Huntley was a Guyanese-British political reformer and prominent race equality campaigner.
10 Facts About Jessica Huntley
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Jessica Huntley was a publisher of black and Asian literature, and a women's and community rights activist.
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Jessica Huntley is notable as the founder in 1969 of Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications in London.
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Jessica Huntley was born in Bagotstown, British Guiana on 23 February 1927, the only daughter and the youngest of four children of James Carroll and his wife, Hectorine Carroll.
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Unable to finish high school on the family's meagre finances, Jessica Huntley attended evening classes in shorthand and typing.
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In January 1950, Jessica Huntley co-founded the first national government of British Guiana, elected through mass suffrage, alongside Leaders Cheddi Jagan, Janet Jagan, Eric Huntley, Eusi Kwayana and other members of the People's Progressive Party.
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Jessica Huntley moved to the UK in April 1958, following her husband, who had moved there in 1957 to look for work.
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In 1969, Jessica Huntley co-founded, with her husband Eric Jessica Huntley, the London-based publishing company Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, which was named in honour of two heroes of the Caribbean resistance, Toussaint L'Ouverture and Paul Bogle.
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Jessica Huntley was instrumental in the establishment of the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books, held between 1982 and 1995, of which she was joint director with John La Rose until 1984.
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Jessica Huntley died on 13 October 2013 at Ealing Hospital, survived by her husband Eric, their son Chauncey and daughter Accabre.