The Caribbean branch of the Toronto-based Global Afrikan Congress (GAC) this week welcomed British Prime Minister Tony Blair's comments on the horrors of slavery, saying he has done much more for the cause than "our own" Black-led governments in the region on the issue. Maxie Fox, a spokesman for the GAC formed in Barbados in 2002, said the GAC and other Afro organizations have been trying for years to persuade regional governments to "have a discourse" on slavery, its effects on Blacks and even reparations, but only Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo, a Hindu, has seen it fit to acknowledge correspondence.
'It is a cause to celebrate, for slavery is the worst abomination that one set of people can, through their power and might, inflict on another," said [Bruce Golding] in his message. "In that celebration, we honour the courage of those leaders who fought the battle against slavery at times when it seemed to be a battle that would never be won, those who sacrificed their lives so that our forefathers could be free and our nation be built."
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
64p, John Gabriel Stedman, of Holland, was a lieutenant-colonel in the Dutch military and served in Surinam (Dutch Guiana) where he married a mulatto slave named Joanna and fathered a son. This compilation of excerpts from Stedman's narrative concern Joanna and their son, and begins with Stedman and Joanna's first meeting while she was a slave, their marriage, early life together, difficulty in securing freedom for Joanna and her son.
