1963 – Une Année Charnière à St. Martin

About the Book

About the Author

Daniella Jeffry Pilot was born on the Caribbean island of St. Martin in 1941. Her primary and high school education was received in Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe. She graduated from the prestigious University of Paris-Sorbonne with a Bachelor of Arts with major in the teaching of English and obtained a Master’s Certificate at the University of Tananarive in Madagascar, where she taught English at a Senior High School for nine years. On her return to St. Martin in 1974, she taught French at the Vocational School, then English at the Collège of Marigot. In 1991, she was appointed by the Collège to develop its two-year English-French teaching program until her retirement in 1999. The Minister of Education awarded her France’s Knight of Academic Palms in 2000. In 1978, seven years before 1963 – A Landmark year in St. Martin appeared as a fourteen-part series in the St. Maarten/St. Martin Newsday, Daniella Jeffry co-founded Cogito, a bilingual review for which she wrote articles on education, history, linguistics, and society. She was the coordinating editor of A Status for Saint-Martin: References of Hope, the book of the major studies on constitutional matters relative to St. Martin North. The English/French book-form edition of 1963, the author’s first book, was published in 2003. The author published The Status Scandal in 2006, and Saint Martin – Destabilization of the French Caribbean in 2011, both with separate French editions. A court-certified translator since 1989, she has translated the published works of archaeologist Dr. Jay Haviser and noted author George Lamming into French. Her “community activism” since 1981 led her to become a Municipal Councilor from 2001 to 2007. A member of the Société d’Histoire de la Guadeloupe, the mother of three sons and one daughter, Daniella Jeffry intends to pursue her historical research on the people of St. Martin.