Emancipation Day

Trinidad and Tobago is the first country in the world to have declared a national holiday to commemorate the event beginning in 1985 and largely due to the efforts of the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC) and the Emancipation Support Committee (ESC).

Emancipation Day is also a national holiday in the Bahamas.

In addition Emancipation Day is informally celebrated in many other areas in the West Indies and in parts of Africa particularly Ghana, and in communities in Canada, United States, and the United Kingdom.

The Internet lists news stories on Emancipation Day in media houses as diverse as the Hamilton Spectator of Canada, Netherlands Antilles Daily Herald, African News Dimension of South Africa, Public Agenda of Ghana, and Australia’s International News Service. Let us recall how slavery and emancipation came about.

West Indian slavery began in the early 1500s soon after the Europeans came to the New World. Millions of Africans were transported in terrible conditions across the infamous Middle Passage in a triangular trade in which huge profits were made from their servitude on sugar and other plantations.

Indeed in contrast to the misery suffered by slaves, the plantations prospered so greatly that the West Indian colonies enjoyed greater political clout in Europe than the colonies of North America — a fact which some historians say stirred the resentment that led to the American War of Independence.

While the West Indies has enjoyed 168 years of Emancipation which was declared in 1838, West Indian slavery itself lasted almost twice as long, some 300 years starting in the early 1500s.

Various factors have been attributed to bringing down slavery. The West Indies saw slave revolts and wars waged by the Maroons such as Sam Sharpe’s Rebellion in Jamaica. Slaves also practised forms of passive resistance such as sabotage. Added to this were the efforts in Europe of abolitionists such as Granville Sharpe and William Wilberforce. Simple economics may also have helped end slavery.

It is important to understand how much consistent hard work went into gradually chipping away at slavery through winning the Amelioration of slave conditions, to banning the Slave Trade in 1808 (almost 200 years ago), to the going through the Apprenticeship System as a transition period from slavery to freedom, to eventually winning full Emancipation.

Like the establishment of slavery itself, the winning of freedom was done by the work of many hands of many hues.

Nearly 500 years after the introduction of slavery and some 168 years after the proclamation of Emancipation, we would say the descendants of slaves have much to be proud of in the societies they have created in the West Indies.

West Indian societies are renown for their sense of democracy and freedom, and for being relatively peaceful, where various groups coexist well with each other. West Indian societies have established strong, proud identities, which are projected throughout the world in their music, dance, art, and language. The West Indies Cricket Team and the football teams of Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica have proudly strode the world stage. So with millions of Afro-Caribbean people having survived centuries of slavery and the slave trade, we think that in many ways their descendants have done well over the years to shape societies that their ancestors would in many ways be proud of.

Happy Emancipation Day.