Janet Jagan

Who is Janet Jagan?

Janet Jagan, born Janet Rosenberg in Chicago, Illinois, was an American-born Guyanese politician who became the first female President of Guyana and one of the most influential figures in the country's independence movement. She met Cheddi Jagan while both were students in the United States, married him in 1943, and moved with him to British Guiana, where the couple co-founded the People's Progressive Party (PPP) in 1950. Over four decades of anti-colonial and pro-democracy activism she served as a legislator, government minister, and editor of the PPP's newspaper Mirror, and was repeatedly targeted by colonial and later domestic authorities for her political work, including a period of imprisonment. After her husband's death in office in 1997, she was elected President of Guyana later that year, becoming the country's first woman to hold the office, before resigning in 1999 for health reasons. She remained active in Guyanese public life and the PPP until her death in Georgetown in 2009, and is remembered as a founding figure of the modern Guyanese state.

Sources: Jagan, Janet, Letters to Cheddi (2005) · Government of Guyana — official presidential biographies · Stabroek News — obituary and retrospectives on Janet Jagan (2009)