200years…

 
After all, what makes any event important, unless by its observation we become better and wiser, and learn to do justly, to love mercy,and walk humbly before God…. OLADAH EQUIANO. ( an exslave that was stripped of his home, culture and language)
25 MARCH 2007 will mark 200years to the day that a parliamentary Bill was passed to abolish the slave trade in the British colonies. Although it would be another 30 years before slaves gained their final freedom – when slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire.The need for a large and steady supply of labour on the sugar plantations of the Caribbean and South America, and on the cotton plantations in North America leaded to need of labour (Guess where they looked?) but to the dark continent of Africa.
The Middle Passage was the sailing of slave ships from Africa to the Americas. It is estimated that between nine to 12 million Africans were forced to make this passages The African captives were considered as ‘cargo’ and inhumanely packed together below the deck of a ship for most of the journey This took anywhere from six to eigth weeks, Conditions were appalling in the packed and unhealthy ship holds, and up to one in five died. Uprisings were common, but were violently suppressed .The mortality rate for the average journey was 10-15 per cent due to ill treatment, malnutrition and disease.Once the ships arrived at their destination, the surviving Africans were cleaned and prepared for auction.Now …I am not going to go into all the different wronged that the salves encountered, this is a season to remember those that were lost, the pain and suffering endured.

A time to salute those that fought against it and help bring an end. It a time for forgiveness and yes apology …..But most of all forgiveness and a time for closure, and this not be repeated in it’s different forms today!

The effect of slavery has left lasting damage to a whole race of people, but should not be used as an excuse not to progress and achieve their best.

What is slavery?
 A slave is one…

• forced to work – through mental or physical threat;
• owned or controlled by an ‘employer’, usually through mental or physical abuse or threatened abuse;
• dehumanised, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as ‘property’
• physically constrained or has restrictions placed on his/her freedom of movement.

…so today we remember those who endure this evil…those that did not survive the journey and died as “cargo”
Roll call and Salute ….
 To the freedom fighters and those who rose to became a symbol of encouragement to other slaves…
The first recorded slave revolt was in 1570. There were at least 250 shipboard rebellions. Jamaican slave society faced a serious revolt every decade, in addition to prolonged guerrilla war. In 1760, 30,000 Jamaican slaves revolted. The culmination, recorded in CLR James’s magisterial The Black Jacobins, was the 1791 slave revolt in St Domingue.

 Granville Sharp, Olaudah Equiano, Ottobah Cugoano, Thomas Clarkson, John Newton, William Wilberforce, Hannah More, William Knibb,  Ignatius Sancho,  Elizabeth Heyrick,  Samuel Adja(Ajayi)i Crowther,  John Wesley Toussaint, L’Overture Sam Sharpe.
For more please go to  http://www.setallfree.net