As Emancipation Day 2022 approaches, the Grenada National Reparations Committee (GNRC) wants Grenadians to honour their African ancestors in a visible display this year. The GNRC is marking Friday, July 29, as “African Wear Day’’.
Emancipation Day commemorates the occasion on August 1, 1834, when the British granted freedom to about 800,000 enslaved Africans in Canada and in its then colonies in the English-speaking Caribbean.
An amount, now valued at 178.6 billion in British currency, was paid in compensation to slave owners in 1834. Nothing was paid to the enslaved who endured generations of whipping, torture, beheading, rape and humiliation.
“I encourage each and every Grenadian of African descent to remember our ancestors and to pay homage to them by participating in African Wear Day on July 29,’’ said GNRC Chairman, Ambassador Arley Gill.
“On July 29, we invite you to wear an Africentric item of clothing; whether it’s a shirt, dress, cap, kente cloth scarf or dashiki. Let’s continue honouring our ancestors’ legacy through our culture, our history and in our undying quest for true freedom – mental, economic and political – and by calling for reparations from those implicated in the enslavement of our foreparents.’’
Among the activities to be held this year in Grenada to commemorate Emancipation Day is an online lecture on “Orality and Traditional Mas of Grenada’’.
The lecture, on Monday, July 25, is a collaboration between The Institute for People’s Enlightenment and the Open Campus in Grenada of the University of the West Indies.
The featured speaker will be Dr Tola Dabiri of Leeds Beckett University in England.
