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.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
202 p, "Why do the people of the French Caribbean still continue to be haunted by the memory of their slave past more than one hundred and fifty years after the abolition of slavery? What process led to the divorce of their collective memory of slavery and emancipation from France's portrayal of these historical phenomena? How are Martinicans and Guadeloupeans today transforming the silences of the past into historical and cultural manifestations rooted in the Caribbean? This book answers these questions by relating the 1998 controversy surrounding the 150th anniversary of France's abolition of slavery to the period of the slave regime spanning the late Enligtenment and the French Revolution. By comparing a diversity of documents - including letters by slaves, free people of color, and planters, as well as writings by the philosophes, royal decrees, and court cases - the author untangles the complex forces of the slave regime that have shaped collective memory. The current nationalization of the memory of slavery in France has turned these once peripheral claims into passionate political and cultural debates." --Jacket.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Discusses the danger that people took to abolish slavery in the West Indies; "Du droit de visite maritime accordé à l'Angleterre par les puissance du continent": p. 269-297.
'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."
St. Croix, V.I.: Virgin Islands Emancipation Commission
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
80 p, Contents: Editor's preface / Arnold R. Highfield -- Freedom in Frederiksted / Richard A. Schrader -- A chronology of slavery and emancipation in the history of the Danish West Indies / Svend E. Holsoe -- Emancipation and the new social order: views from the upper class / Marilyn F. Krigger -- Emancipation in hemispheric perspective / Lauren Larsen -- Political and economic aspects of emancipation / Malik Sekou -- A selection of historical documents relating to emancipation in the Danish West Indies / George F. Tyson -- An annotated bibliography / Arnold R. Highfield
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
398 p, "Análisis y reflexión acerca de los factores que contribuyeron a la supresión de la esclavitud en el Caribe español en general y, en particular, en Cuba, en torno a la cual están dedicados la mayoría de los textos presentados." (Publisher)
