Slaves’ Fight For Freedom Remembered
By Zahra Sethna, for the Chronicle
In 1997, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) proclaimed 23 August the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave
Trade and its Abolition as a way of paying tribute to the slaves’ fight for freedom. This year, for the first time, the transatlantic trade of slaves will be recognized as a crime against humanity.
In a message, UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura noted that the day “represents an opportunity to institutionalize remembrance, to prevent this crime against humanity from being forgotten or obliterated, and to retrieve the memory of a tragedy that was long hidden or unrecognized, thus restoring it, in view of its universal nature, to its rightful place in human consciousness”.
In an effort to educate students about the slave trade, 100 schools in Africa, Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean will test a new study programme in September, part of the “Breaking The Silence” project launched by UNESCO in 1998.
Elizabeth Khawajkie, the international coordinator of the UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network (ASPnet), that links around 7,000 schools in 171 countries, said: “The slave trade represents the biggest forced movement of people in history. However, this chapter of history has largely remained hidden, especially in school text books.”
The new educational programme, devised by Hilary Beckles of the University of the West Indies in Barbados, takes the form of a trilogy: “Voices of Slaves”, “Voyages of Slaves”, and “Visions of Slaves”. The first two books, in English, French and Spanish, are already available, while the third is still being prepared.
Voices of Slaves, a collection of moving testimonies, allows teachers to leave the beaten path by giving pupils a taste of how slaves themselves felt about their fate. The 80-page book relates more than twenty stories of remarkable lives, such as Prince Zamba of the Congo who made a fortune selling slaves, only to end up in captivity himself; Marie Prince, the first Negro to escape from slavery in the British Antilles; and Boukman, the renowned leader of the uprising that led to the Haitian revolution.
Voyages of Slaves examines the causes and consequences of the slave trade and includes chronologies, figures, teaching advice and a comprehensive bibliography. It makes the many aspects of the slave trade, which by the end of the eighteenth century had become the biggest commercial enterprise in the Atlantic world, accessible to children.
Links:
ASPnet Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project
International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave
Trade and its Abolition
Anti-Slavery International
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