At midnight, a hush fell over the crowd at Jamaica’s annual Emancipation Jubilee. The pageantry and performances that led up to that charged silence had been designed to evoke the anguish of slavery. Re-enactments and poignant poetry set the scene, erasing the centuries between the audience and the enslaved men, women and children who once stood on Jamaican soil – abused, oppressed and voiceless.
As the hand of the clock passed midnight, the silence was broken by a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, signalling freedom, hope and the definitive end to the centuries-long transatlantic slave movement that allowed Europeans to abduct, traffic, murder and inflict unimaginable suffering on African people.
