By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 06, 2022
On the celebration of Indian Arrival Day, May 31, an Express editorial recounted: “On this day 177 years ago the Fatel Razack entered the Gulf of Paria with over 200 Indians aboard, the first of 143,939 citizens of India to be brought here under a British scheme to deal with a shortage of labour following the emancipation of enslaved Africans in 1834–38.”
Continue reading Origin of Indian indentureship in Trinidad
By Angali Hosein
November 04, 2021 – newsday.co.tt
Sitaram and Shubh Divali to the Hindu community and to my beloved country, Trinidad and Tobago. Divali or Deepavali translates to a row of lights or festival of lights and bears a great significance in Hindu culture as it emphasises light over darkness as well as good over evil. Thus, the auspiciousness of this day brings me feelings of joy, happiness and love, which I try my best to share with those around me.
Continue reading Letting goodness shine for Divali
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 16, 2021
PART 1
“I maintain that art at its best reveals to us the fullness of what it means to be human.”
—Ben Okri, The Theatre Diaries
No creative personality writes, paints or sculpts outside of his/her time and place. Necessarily a product of his history and his geography, s/he always tries to cast a light on the perils that confront his people. In so doing, s/he reflects on the truths and failings of humanity as well. LeRoy Clarke, our master-blaster, resided in that elevated region of greatness. He took on the persona “The Eye” to illuminate the perils that confronted his nation. In the words of our Orisha devotees, he was a Seer (he would have said Obeah) man, who strove assiduously to illumine the darkness that enveloped his people.
Continue reading The Passing of the Pointer Man
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 09, 2021
PART II
“Pas de six ans, Point de six ans!” (“No to Six Years. No more six years!”)
—The chant of the ex-slaves on Emancipation Day
More apprentices came to Government House on Saturday, August 2, to assert their freedom. There was “a visible increase of insolence in the behaviour of the Negroes. The muster around Government House continued, and His Excellency again attempted to persuade them to return to their work, but his efforts were fruitless. They first laughed at, and then hooted [we would say heckled] him” (PoS Gazette, August 5, 1834).
Continue reading GLORIOUS DAYS OF THE HAPPY AND THE FREE
By Kamla Persad Bissessar
Opposition Leader and Leader of the UNC Party
August 01, 2021 – Facebook
Today our nation celebrates Emancipation Day, a day that marks the abolition of the vile practice of chattel slavery. It is a day for both celebration of the liberation of enslaved Africans and an opportunity to reflect on, and learn from, the lessons of this dark period in our history.
The enslavement of Africans throughout the Caribbean and the Americas, via the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, is perhaps the greatest crime against humanity in the history of mankind.
Continue reading Kamla Persad Bissessar’s Emancipation Day Statement
By Dr Keith Rowley
Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago
August 01, 2021 – Facebook
Happy Emancipation Day to all the people of Trinidad and Tobago, from the Government, my own family and myself on the occasion of Emancipation Day 2021.
Today, we recognise not just the horrific experience of our African ancestors – but the impact it continues to have on the lives of millions of their descendants.
Continue reading Dr Keith Rowley’s Emancipation Day Statement
By Clint Chan Tack
August 01, 2021 – newsday.co.tt
MOVEMENT for Social Justice (MSJ) political leader David Abdulah said slavery continues today in different forms.
He made the statement in his Emancipation Day message to the nation.
He said the MSJ “deplores the fact that our education system is so deficient in the teaching of our real history – the history of the struggle “out of slavery, through indenture and up to freedom.”
Continue reading MSJ’s David Abdulah: Slavery continues today
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 01, 2021
PART 1
The masters were “dam tief”, the Governor an “old rogue”, and the King not such a fool as to buy them half free when he was rich enough to pay for them altogether.
—Port of Spain Gazette, August 5, 1834
Today is Emancipation Day. Ashton Ford, one of our respected elders, remembers the impetus that led former prime minister George Chambers to change the Discovery Day holiday (a day that recognised the misdeeds of our oppressors) to Emancipation Day that honours the achievements of our ancestors.
Chambers believed if you named your streets and monuments after local patriots, you encouraged a sense of nationhood and strengthened national identity among the population.
Continue reading Glorious day(s) of the happy and the free
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
June 29, 2021
“Nations seldom listen to advice from individuals, however reasonable. They are taught less by theories than by facts and events.”
—Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
Last week I commended President Joseph Biden for signing into law a bill that made June 19 a national holiday to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. It took two and a half years (that is, on June 19, 1865) to notify enslaved African Americans that “all slaves are free” and the 13th Amendment to free them officially on December 6, 1865.
Continue reading A Luta Continua
By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
June 14, 2021
Years after the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2011 as “The International Year for People of African Descent”, it must be realized that the European enslavement of African people or the “MAAFA” (“great disaster”) only represents .01 per cent of the history of African people on this planet. Put another way, for the 99.9 per cent of their history, Africans were a free people.
Furthermore, “there were a thousand years of independent state formation and state management in inner West Africa called the western Sudan before the (European) slave trade.”
Continue reading Getting world history right: real African history