Today is Emancipation Day, but this historian says ‘emancipation is not over’

Amidst the revellry at this time of the year, a wellknown historian wants residents to pause for a sober moment to look at the progress of human development among those of Black African lineage and his suggestion that “the struggle for real freedom” continues.
“The emancipation process is not yet over,” Dorbrene O’Marde said on OBSERVER radio yesterday. The writer and outspoken advocate for reparations for the enslavement of Africans was speaking about activities that are being held o commemorate Emancipation Day.
Last evening, the watch night held every year to mark Emancipation Day was held in the Botanical Gardens. Speaking about the event, O’Marde said, “We do this to re-establish our humanity as an African people. We do it in remembrance of the atrocities that were meted out to our forebears.”
O’Marde is the Chairperson of the Antigua and Barbuda Reparations Support Commission. Meanwhile, Dr Chenzira Davis-Kahina, the featured speaker at last night’s event, said young black people are becoming more aware of the value of their African heritage.
She said, “Persons are at least more engaged in the process of understanding what reparatory justice is…full-fledged liberation, sovereignty and independence.”
Britain’s Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 outlawed slavery throughout the British Empire and it came into force the following year, on the 1st of August 1834.