Melva Lowe de Goodin

Melva Lowe de Goodin (born 1945) is an Afro-Panamanian academic and writer, whose work has focused on adding back the historical contributions of Panama's Afro-Caribbean people. Educated in the United States, she began her teaching career in Africa and upon returning to Panama recognized how invisible the community of blacks who were not Latino were. Joining the newly developing black movement in the country, she strove to educate and preserve the history of West Indians who had immigrated to Panama. Teaching at the University of Panama and simultaneously designing a course and teaching English at Florida State University-Panama, she carried on a dual career of activism and education until 2000, when she was made head of the English Department at the University of Panama. She has published two textbooks; a history of the African diaspora in Panama, which has been published multiple times in both English and Spanish; and wrote a widely-known play to address the historical contributions and biases which have impacted Panama's black citizens.

Early life

Melva Lowe was born in 1945 in Red Tank, a town in the Panama Canal Zone to Matilde (née Wilson) and Oscar Lowe. She was the third child in a family of five children born to the couple who were first-generation Afro-Panamanians. Her grandparents, immigrated from Jamaica as laborers to build the canal and lived in the zone designated for West Indian immigrants. Soon after her birth, her family moved to the town of La Boca, where she completed her primary studies. Around 1956, the family moved to Paraíso, where she finished her secondary schooling, at the Panama Canal Company schools, before moving to the United States to study at the Connecticut College for Women.