Bernard Coard was a key member of the New Jewel Movement who together with Maurice Bishop, planned and lead the Grenada Revolution.

A rigid Marxist-Leninist who favored a tight central government, Coard became the Deputy Prime Minister of Grenada from 1979 until 1983.

Bernard Coard attended Grenada Boys’ Secondary School (GBSS).  After graduating from GBSS, in 1963 he began teaching at his alma mater.

Together with Maurice Bishop, Coard formed the Grenada Assembly of Youth after Truth, an organization of approximately 60 members designed to enable students from GBSS, Presentation College and other schools in the town of St. George to address the important questions of the day.

In 1963 Coard left Grenada to attend Brandeis University in Massachusetts where he earned a degree in Economics.

In 1966 he moved to England. During the five (5) years that Coard worked and studied in the UK he earned a Masters Degree in Comparative Political Economy and began studying for a PhD in development economics from Sussex University. Coard ran youth clubs in South East London, taught school in East London, and wrote a book on how the British education system discriminated against West Indian children.

He also met Jamaican-born Phyllis Evans whom he married four (4) months later.

Coard accepted an offer to teach at the University of the West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine in Trinidad and settled there with his family (he and Phyllis would go on to have three (3) children).  In 1974 the family then moved to Jamaica where Coard taught for two (2) more years at UWI’s Jamaica Mona campus.

Coard and his family returned to Grenada to live permanently in September 1976 although he had been traveling between his UWI teaching position and Grenada since January 1974.

Upon returning to Grenada in 1976, Bernard Coard ran for election.  He also served as mentor for student study group known as OREL and by 1978 he was head of NJM’s organizing committee.

As one of the Grenada 17, in 1983 he was imprisoned for his role in the execution of his colleague, former Prime Minister of Grenada, Maurice Bishop.  He was released from prison on September 5, 2009.

Bernard Coard is the husband of Phyllis Coard.