International Slavery Museum to mark Slavery Remembrance Day with weekend of events

Zita Holbourne and professor Stephen Small will deliver keynote speeches as part of the online programme

INTERNATIONAL SLAVERY MUSEUM: The museum's Slavery Remembrance Day activities will take place online this year (Photo: Pete Carr)

HUMAN RIGHTS campaigner and activist Zita Holbourne and professor Stephen Small will each deliver the annual Dorothy Kuya memorial lecture as part of the International Slavery Museum’s weekend-long online programme to mark Slavery Remembrance Day.

Every year, the International Slavery Museum commemorates Slavery Remembrance Day (23 August), which acknowledges the uprising of enslaved Africans on the island of Saint Domingue, now Haiti. 

The date of the uprising was chosen by UNESCO for the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition because of the crucial role it played in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.

“For healing to happen there must be reparations and there must be race equality in our lifetime”

Zita Holbourne

It serves as an important reminder that enslaved Africans were the main agents of their own liberation.

Holbourne, the chair and co-founder of BARAC UK, the grassroots organisation which campaigns against racism and injustice, will give the Dorothy Kuya lecture on August 22.

She is expected to explore issues of equality, freedom and justice in her keynote address, and will also discuss reparations, healing from collective trauma and equal rights for future generations.

Holbourne said: “It is an honour and privilege to be asked to deliver this important lecture to mark Slavery Remembrance Day and in memory of the phenomenal campaigner for race equality and justice, Dorothy Kuya.

‘HONOURED’: Zita Holbourne (Photo: Elizabeth Dalziel photographer, courtesy of Women Activists of East London exhibition)

“At this time where there is a growing Black Lives Matter movement globally, after over a decade of austerity impacting adversely and disproportionately on black communities and in the midst of the coronavirus crisis which is also impacting disproportionately it is crucial that the legacies of enslavement and colonialism which contribute to systemic racism today are addressed as a matter of urgency. 

“The themes for this year’s UNESCO Slavery Remembrance Day are healing and remembrance. We remember the plight of our ancestors and the brutality they faced but we live with racism every day – for healing to happen there must be reparations and there must be race equality in our lifetime.”

The International Slavery Museum said: “From Windrush to the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19, systemic discrimination and State brutality to everyday racism and micro aggressions, we are living with the legacies of enslavement and colonialism. Zita will explore this difficult but much needed narrative.”

PICTURED: Professor Stephen Small

Small, an academic at the University of California, Berkeley, will deliver the Dorothy Kuya memorial lecture on 23 August.

Liverpool-born Small will talk about how British systems of slavery shaped the lives of Africans and their descendants, and the features of imperialism in Britain, with specific mention of Liverpool, and the British empire.

In addition to the keynote speeches, the International Slavery Museum’s programme of remembrance events includes an online map tracing Liverpool’s connections to slavery and sites of empowerment curated by historian Laurence Westgaph.

There will also be a virtual libation ceremony with Chief Angus Chukuemeka and pupils from Calderstones School.

Full details of the programme can be found here.

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