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Emancipation: Its Vigour and Its Hope

An Emancipation Lecture by Dobrene Omarde

August 14, 2006
By Ayanna Gillian

Dobrene Omarde, Antiguan cultural activist presented the feature lecture for the St. Lucian Emancipation celebrations. The lecture entitled Emancipation: Its Vigour and Its Hope, was held at the Cultural Development Foundation Conference Room, Barnards Hill, Castries and was attended by a small but interested and vibrant audience. Omarde, a public health official by profession has been involved in Caribbean cultural activism, research in the areas of Calypso, Cricket and African history, and was hailed as a soldier for African and Caribbean culture by chairman, Kendal Hippolyte, himself one of the stalwarts of St. Lucian theatre and poetry.

Omarde's lecture sought to give much needed historical detail on the atrocity of slavery and its effects on the contemporary issues facing the African Diaspora. It attempted also to dispel the myths about African lack of enterprise and industry after Emancipation, while contextualizing the myth and misnomer of legal 'Emancipation' and what it really meant for the freed slaves who still existed in a state of 'unfreedom' even after legally instituted emancipation. Even further, the lecture traced the pattern of Caribbean economic development (or underdevelopment) and the current state of economic bondage as an inevitable consequence of slavery and imperialist globalization and highlighted the pressing case for African reparations for plantation slavery.

Omarde described slavery as the sum of all villainies; founded in violence, nurtured in violence and indeed, only ended with violence. He noted that by the legal end of the slave trade in 1807, European powers had led 10 million Africans to slavery, killing six to eight million in the crossing from the African continent. While one in three Africans died within three years of arrival on the plantation, Europe and America grew fat from the profits of African slavery while Africa and the Caribbean saw their indigenous populations severely depleted, (in the case of the Amerindians in the Caribbean almost completely decimated). It is these historical processes that have set in stone economic relations with the colonial masters up to contemporary times.

Omarde disputes the conventional thesis explaining the reasons for the abolition of the slave trade and the emancipation of millions of slaves in the Americas. While he agrees that the unprofitability of plantation slavery and the anti-slavery humanitarian lobby in Europe did contribute to the discourse, it was the agency of Africans as manifested in bloody and frightening rebellions and insurrections and the security concerns it created in the plantation societies, that were instrumental in propelling Emancipation. Omarde asserts that the large populations of Africans that outnumbered Europeans in the Caribbean and their increasingly well-organized and frequent rebellions struck fear into the heart of European planters. The historic rebellion of Haiti, which paved the way for its independence in 1804, increased this fear, as not only was the defeat of the French army a crushing blow for European morale and challenged the myth of European invulnerability, but Haiti became a symbolic beacon for freedom for other Caribbean islands, as well as a place of refuge for escaping slaves. For Omarde, the discourse on Emancipation has been too heavily weighted on what was granted to Africans rather than what Africans fought for and seized for themselves through their own agency and will.

The lecture detailed the vibrancy of the post-Emancipation free settlements even in light of the betrayal and disappointment of legislated Emancipation. The life of many Africans, the day after the Emancipation proclamation was read, was little different from the day before. While legally they were now 'free', the land was not theirs, the government was not theirs and the ability to work, make money and provide for families still existed in the hands of the colonizers and former masters. Despite this situation, Omarde notes that a strong sense of kinship, family and cooperation existed in the newly founded ex-slave communities. The number of freehold settlements and plantations bought by groups of ex-slaves increased dramatically over the years, in direct opposition to the assertion that ex-slaves were lazy and refused to work after they were 'freed'. In Barbados there were one thousand free villages in 1839, only a few years after Emancipation and by 1859 there were three thousand five hundred settlements. In Antigua sixty seven free villages were founded between 1833 and 1838. Omarde takes great issue with the conventional discourse, even among Afrocentric scholarship that the breakdown in present day Black family life is due to the plantation system which broke up Black families and in many ways bred a propensity for Black men to live apart from their biological families. Omarde declared that his research shows evidence to the contrary where along with the commitment of Africans to building free independent settlements there was also a great commitment to rebuilding extended families and retain ties of kinship. If one of the greatest psychological ruptures was the inability of Africans to protect their families, the post-Emancipation era was marked by an intense desire to do so. This was evidenced by a marked desire to prevent children from working as far as possible and to arrange work schedules to ensure that children were taken care of properly.

Extremely informative and insightful was Omarde's foray into the contemporary Caribbean reality and his analysis of how plantation slavery has had a fundamental impact on the unequal economic, social and political relationships that currently exist between the Caribbean and the European and American metropoles. The Caribbean reality can be characterized by vibrant cultural diversity, an abundance of underutilized natural and human resources, resilience and continued resistance to hegemonic power systems that have been a part of its history since the arrival of European imperialist powers. It was the first to usher in Emancipation by force and by decree and since its Independence, has been attempting to form creative options for social and economic reform despite heavy opposition and lack of support from international economic and political organizations. Despite the image of the 'happy natives' of the tourist brochures and the increasingly commoditized Caribbean popular culture industry, the threat of real poverty exists, with lowering currencies and mounting debts. Indeed, fourteen countries in the Caribbean are listed among the most indebted nations in the world. Omarde asserts that we exist in a peripheral area of the world capitalist system, where our growth has been structured to be dependent on external instead of internal demand. As a result, it is a constant challenge for the region to grow autonomously. The plantation economy set in stone the system of relations that seems to have condemned the region to poverty and dependence.

This system of historical wrongs, unequal trade relationships and its consequential social and economic problems probably has its best Caribbean example in Haiti. Omarde has called Haiti the greatest moral wrong ever committed in the hemisphere and the place to whom we all owe the greatest debt. In Dr Hilary Beckles' 2004 Emancipation lecture, 'Emancipation to Globalization' re-televised in St. Lucia this year, he detailed the difference between 'Freedom' and 'Emancipation'. Beckles said that freedom is an inalienable right, one that cannot be granted or legislated, whereas Emancipation was a legal entity, granted by the colonial masters that allowed for social, economic and political situations to continue to be defined and controlled by the Colonial masters. Beckles declared that Haiti manifested the full power, potential and threat to the White world of African freedom; it was not legislated or granted, but unequivocally taken. It was this distinct difference that allowed Haiti to draft its own constitution and declare that anyone of African or Amerindian descent that made his/her way to Haiti was now not only free but a Haitian citizen. In fact a historical account exists of British slaves outwitting their capturers who had stopped at port in Jamaica to do business. The slaves commandeered the ship and sailed to Haiti. When the British planter wrote to the Haitian government demanding the return of his 'property', the Haitian president told him in no uncertain terms that he is free to collect his property in the harbour, but these Africans are free men.

Omarde, echoing Beckles sentiments, spoke a truth that few West Indian leaders have been brave enough to articulate; that it was President Aristide's formal request for the repayment of the unjust and inhumane sum of money that Haiti was made to pay its former planters in 1825 in compensation for loss of property incurred due to Haiti's independence, that led to his removal from office in the European and American orchestrated coup of 2004. Beckles declared that while the Caribbean leaders hemmed and hawed about how many Haitian refugees it was willing to accept, they should remember the consequences Haiti has had to pay for saying it would take all of us, and that we could all have a home there. Omarde, too, declared unequivocally that just as President Aristide made a formal demand for reparations, so should Caribbean governments, as a collective entity, begin to take firm diplomatic steps to not only have that money returned to Haiti but to have reparations paid for the damage done to all Africans, the victims of history's most bloody holocaust.

On the issue of reparations, Omarde is quite clear; African slavery constituted a crime against humanity and reparations for loss of life and the traumatic effects of the slave system must be paid. He detailed the circumstances under which reparations were paid to the Jews, the Japanese and Poland after World War II, Maoris of New Zealand, Native Americans by the United States, the Eskimos by Canada, and the Aborigines by Australia. Omarde revealed that the current estimate of the sum owed to Africans is now approximately $777 trillion. This repayment along with the cancellation of Caribbean debt can represent a way forward for the region and a platform upon which to redefine our relationship with European and American trading partners and international financial organizations.

Omarde ended his lecture with an historical anecdote that summed up simply and succinctly the moral right of the reparations case. He shared a factual account of a letter written to a former slave by his former master in the post-Emancipation United States requesting that he return to the plantation to work for him. The ex-slave responded most cordially, inquiring of the whereabouts of other ex-slaves and of his former master's health. He revealed that he was now married to a former slave from the same plantation and was employed and educating his children. He then declared that he had forgiven the planter and bore no hard feelings, however, if he were to consider returning to work on the plantation he would need assurance that the master would not treat him and his family as injuriously as he had in days gone by. He declared that in good faith, the only way he could be sure was if the former master paid him for all the years he and his wife had toiled on the plantation without pay. The present sum calculated with interest, with appropriate deductions for the items of clothing and two doctor's visits that he and his wife Mandy had received over the decades would be $11,680.00. He indicated that the sum should be sent to the attached address and when it was received he would forthwith return to the plantation. Needless to say, there is no historical record of any response by the former planter.

The case for reparations is clear, Omarde said. It is only with the return of that which was taken, the compensation for that which was lost and the leveling of the world economic and political playing fields, can the psychic rupture be healed and a measure of justice and good faith be restored to international community. Until then, the Western world has no moral authority to condemn, police or reprimand any country, or to claim any morality in its dealings. In essence the road to freedom is not yet complete. While legal Emancipation may have been achieved hundreds of years ago, until the debt has been paid and until, like Haiti, nations of the African Diaspora stand up and seize their inalienable right to freedom, then the chains remain, visible and invisible.

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