Una Marson was a pioneering transnational broadcaster from Jamaica
who worked in radio during the 1940’s. She was the first woman of
colour to work for the BBC and was the producer and presenter of the
BBC Empire Service programme Calling the West Indies. She established
an important literary radio programme called Caribbean Voices for an
archipelago of British colonies. The ground-breaking programme
featured then novice but now iconic Caribbean writers such as VS
Naipaul and George Lamming. Recently, scholars and historians have
developed a heightened interest in her work; however, despite closer
examination of her oeuvre, her legacy is hardly celebrated or
acknowledged in a way that befits her accomplishments. Most of this
renewed attention is predominantly focused on her literary work and
very little on her broadcasting achievements. We find this revealing,
since our research traced concrete actions by power brokers at the
BBC to erase and dishonor her contributions to transnational radio
broadcasting. In this critical study, we consider whether race,
ethnicity, gender, and colonialism contributed to her descent into
relative obscurity and in what ways they offer possible insights into
the burial of her broadcasting legacy. We argue that this erasure has
not only created a historical travesty but that it has also
facilitated mis-remembrance by influential communication scholarship.
Our paper examines the implications for denying Marson her rightful
place in broadcasting history and highlights crucial lessons from her
experiences and posthumous mistreatment.