Janet Jagan (nee Rosenberg) was born in 1923 in Chicago into a radical Jewish family. She met Cheddi Jagan, then studying as a dentist in the USA, in 1943 and they were married in the same year. She followed him back to British Guiana (he had gone home earlier to win his family over to the marriage) and from that time onwards played an absolutely central role in the development of radical politics in Guyana. First in the Political Affairs Committee (PAC) and then the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), becoming its general secretary in 1950. Despite attempts by political opponents to play on her ‘foreigness’ and Jewishness, Janet Jagan soon won a place in the hearts of the grass-roots Indo-Guyanese sugar workers who provided one element of the core support for the PPP. From the time of the Enmore estate shootings of 1948, when she was one of the leaders of the funeral march, she was known, for instance, as the ‘blue-eyed bowji’ (sister). In 1953, she was elected to the Legislature as part of the PPP victory and appointed deputy speaker. In 1955, she was imprisoned for six months for political activities during the repression which followed the suspension of the constitution in October 1953.