Category: Featured

The 29th African Remembrance Day (ARD)

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ARD commemorates the experiences and suffering of millions of African men, women and children who perished in the Middle Passage and plantations economies in the New World, as well as on the African continent and Far East. It provides an opportunity to reflect on the journey of their descendants in the fight for justice and equality. It is thus a day for reflection, healing and renewal of the global African family.

The 29th African Remembrance Day (ARD) takes place between 13.30pm – 16..00pm on Tuesday, 1 August 2023 at Museum of London, Docklands. 3 minutes of silence is marked at 3.00 pm – a minute each for the victims in the Americas, the African continent and the Middle /Far East.

This year’s event, themed ‘Apologies and Atonement for African Slavery’, features two keynote addresses by Priscellia Pyhia Robinson (Birthmark of Africa) and John Dower ( from the Trevelyan family) responding to the increasing appetite for apologies.

Background

Apologies, atonement and reparations for slavery are currently high on the agenda. On 19 December 2022, Prime Minister Mark Rutte ushered in a historic turning point, as the Netherlands became the first major European national government to formally apologize for their role enslaving Africans, as well as to commit over £200 million of government funds and resources toward remembrance and restoration work in the former Dutch enslaved colonies. Prime Minister Rutte’s apology (see picture above) comes after city governments, including Amsterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht, issued formal apologies for their own role in the system of trafficking and enslavement of African women, men and children.

Other institutions in the UK such as the Church of England and even individual families, such as the Trevelyan family, have also recently offered formal apologies and reparations.

The growing apologies and instances of reparations are not unique – coming on the heels of longstanding demands from people of African descent over the last 500 years for justice and accountability. This year ARD reflects on the old and new discourses around apologies and atonement, taking stock of this moment of growing debate and movement on the issue, and examining the multi-dimensional aspects associated with apologies and atonement.

For more information contact us: africanremembrance@gmail.com

CONTRIBUTOR BIOGS

PRISCELLIA PYHIA ROBINSON

Priscellia Pyhia Robinson is the President and Director of Birthmark of Africa. She is the head researcher in the disciplines of Law, Criminology and Sociology. Her specialist areas of research is Human Rights, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), Climate Change, Environmental Law, Race Disparities, Reparative Justice, Social Justice, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, the Windrush Generation, the Ongoing Legacy of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the effects of Colonialism within contemporary times.

She is a qualified Barrister of England and Wales and she can also be instructed upon amicus curiae briefs at International Courts and Tribunals. She is one of twelve selected Equality, Diversity and Inclusion panel trainers upon the Bar Race Working Group of the Bar Council of England and Wales. She has been bestowed with the awarded title and position as United Nations Fellow by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights under the International Decade for People of African Descent Fellowship programme. Priscellia Pyhia Robinson is also undertaking her Ph.D. at the University of West London upon the ongoing legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, the Windrush generation and reparative justice.

JOHN DOWER

John Dower is a director in film, television and interactivity, and a Trustee of the Directors Charitable Foundation. Alongside other members of the Trevelyan family, he recently travelled to Grenada to deliver a public apology for their ancestors’ ownership of more than 1,000 enslaved Africans in the country . In its apology, the family also urged the British Government to enter into negotiations with Caribbean governments to make appropriate reparations through CARICOM.

KESHENIWA AGHAJI

Opening prayers will be provided by Kesheniwa Aghaji , an Olorisa (Priestess) of Orisa Orisanla in the Yoruba Ifa tradition offering ceremonies for clearing, empowerment, healing, libation. She is focused on the unfettering for personal sovereignty. She is also an artist of spiritually guided spontaneous artworks that emit a halo, an illumination – light reflecting from the drawing on the line.

The 28th African Remembrance Day (ARD): 1st August 2022

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Theme: Africans in Asia – including a special tribute to Runoko Rashidi

DATE: Monday 1 August 2022, 2.00pm – 4.00pm BST

Venue: Museum of London, Docklands, No.1 Warehouse,

West India Quay, London E14 4AL

The 28th African Remembrance Day (ARD) after two years virtually on Zoom, takes place once again live at the Museum of London, Docklands. ARD commemorates the experiences and suffering of millions of African men, women and children who perished in the Middle Passage and plantations economies in the New World, as well as on the African continent and Far East. It provides an opportunity to reflect on the journey of their descendants in the fight for justice and equality. It is thus a day for reflection, healing and renewal of the global African family. 3 minutes of silence is marked at 3.00 pm – a minute each for the victims in the Americas, the African continent and the Middle /Far East.

The theme for the 28th African Remembrance Day (ARD) 2022 is: ‘Africans in Asia – including a special tribute to Runoko Rashidi’. Two keynote speakers will explore the theme. Professor Shihan de Silva a UN expert on African descendants in Asia will speak on African communities in Asia, while historian Robin Walker will pay a special tribute to Runoko Rashidi, the late great historian and chronicler of the African presence in Asia.

The emergence in the last few years of modern Afro-Asian personalities such as tennis star Naomi Osaka, belie the long historical presence of Africans in Asia. Indeed, historians such as Runoko Rashidi have documented that the underlying original aboriginal populations across many countries were in fact African, with a few remaining survivors, such as those on the Indian Andaman islands, proving the point. Others have posited connections between Ethiopian Cush and Indian Kush at the dawn of civilization, though these remain controversial. In the more recent past, over the last 500 years, many Africans also left the continent for Asia as a result of trade across the Indian Ocean, and also as a result of enslavement. A great example of the latter, and much celebrated by Runoko Rashidi in his talks, is the great Malik Ambar (whose photograph is above). Malik Ambar was a former enslaved Ethiopian who ruled in one of the Indian states as Prime Minister of Ahmadnagar Sultanate in the late 1600s.

Currently we are at a massive historical inflection point – with the rise of the Eurasia. The current war in Ukraine will consolidate the reordering of the world that has slowly been unfolding during the last 30 years, with the rise of Eurasia. For two hundred years, trade in the Atlantic world between Europe and the Americas dominated global trade; then in 1985 the Pacific Ocean trade route between Asia and the Americas became dominant. It is anticipated that from 2030, trade within Eurasia will dominate the global economy – with China once more at the centre of human history.

The falling statues of Edward Colston are also symbols of a geopolitical moment in history, which calls for new thinking amongst Africans. As people of African descent renegotiate their status within the Atlantic space, it is vital that Africa’s new role with the emerging Afro-Asiatic world is also tackled head-on. ARD @ 28 on 1 August 2022 will increase awareness of the much-neglected African presence in this region that is growing in importance, and which will likely dominate the 21st century, in partnership with the African continent.

For more information: africanremembrance@gmail.com

SPEAKERS

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Robin Walker ‘The Black History Man’ was born in London but has also lived in Jamaica. He is a publisher, educator and author.

In 2006 Walker wrote the seminal When We Ruled. It is the most advanced synthesis on Ancient and Mediaeval African history ever written by a single author. In 2011 Black Classic Press of Baltimore published a US version of this book.

Between 2013 and 2019, Walker followed this with When We Ruled: Second Edition, When We Ruled Study Guide and Reading Plan, Blacks and Science Volumes I, II and III, Blacks and Religion Volumes I and II, The Rise and Fall of Black Wall Street and the Seven Key Empowerment Lessons, The Black Musical Tradition and Early Black Literature, 19 Lessons in Black History and Black History Matters. He also wrote three books in collaboration with others: Everyday Life in an Early West African Empire, African Mathematics: History, Study Guide and Classroom Lessons and Black British History: Black Influences on British Culture 1948-2016.

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Professor Shihan de Silva is a Visiting Professor in the College of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto (Japan), a Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge, and an Affiliated Collaborator, University of Colombo (Sri Lanka). She was awarded a Rama Watumull Collaborative Lecture Series award from the Center for South Asian Studies & Student Equity, Excellence and Diversity Award, University of Hawaii, USA, March 2020.

Shihan is an UN expert on Afrodescendants in Asia, UNHCR, Geneva, Switzerland. She served as a Member and Rapporteur of the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Slave Route Project (Paris, France). She is also a member of ICOMOS (Sri Lanka) and an elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society (Great Britain and Ireland). Shihan serves on the editorial boards of Cambridge Scholars Publishing (UK), African Diaspora and Transnationalism (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers) and African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage (UK: Maney Publications).

Organised by

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with the grateful support from the Museum of London, Docklands

27th African Remembrance Day – 1 August 2021

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‘African Liberation Queens – Ancient & Modern’

DATE: Sunday 1 August 2021:

Zoom Meeting 2.00pm – 4.00pm BST

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ARD commemorates the suffering and experiences of millions of African, children, women and men who perished in the Middle Passage and during the period of enslavement and colonisation. 3 minutes of silence is marked at 3.00 pm – a minute each for the victims in the Americas, the African continent and the Middle and Far East.

The theme for the 27the African Remembrance Day (ARD) 2021 is: ‘African Liberation Queens – Ancient and Modern’, which will be explored through two keynote addresses: ‘Fix Your Crown – the Queen Within’ by Christelle Pellecuer & ‘Women leadership and liberation’ by Dr Justina Mutale.

African women have always been at the forefront of leadership and liberation from the classic period of African history to modern times. They have led from the front as leaders of their nations, being some of the first female leaders in history. From the Egyptian Pharoah Sobekneferu who ruled nearly 4,000 years ago and the first to establish the prototype of female Pharoah, to her successor hundreds of years later, Pharaoh Hatshepsut; from the Nubian Kandakes, to Queens Nzinga, Amina and Yaa Asantewaa– they have led from the front as strong military figures, warrior queens, who were also builders and law makers, attracting fierce loyalty and admiration from their people. They are remembered with affection across the African world.

ARD @ 27 on 1 August 2012 will pay to tribute to these great totemic leaders and liberators, as well as ‘dethroned’ female leaders in the modern period who resisted slavery and colonialism such as Harriet Tubman, Nanny, and Winnie Mandela.

Female liberators are veritable conductors of freedom. 20,000 South African women protesting against Apartheid in 1956 broke out in song: “Wathint’abafazi, wathint’imbokodo!” (“Now you have touched the women, you have struck a rock, you have dislodged a boulder, and you will be crushed.”).

Why have women leaders and women led resistance movements, such as the Aba Women’s riots, often been so decisive or the trigger for the huge explosive action? Such explosive resistance has continued to the present with the female leaders of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which has galvanised the struggle for racial justice on a scale unseen since the 1960s, following the murder of George Floyd?

Why, in the cultural reawakening that has unfurled in the last few years, is there now a movement amongst ‘dethroned Queens’ in the diaspora to ‘Fix their crown’? How, do women leaders, however from Hatshepsut onwards, overcome the many barriers to assume their critical positions as equals and as – Queens who can lead?

 

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Christelle Pellecuer, is a fashion expert,  who was born in Madagascar, raisd in South of France, and now lives in the UK. Christelle is the founder of Razana Afrika, an organisation with the aim of empowering people of African descent to learn about their culture and history by providing educational resources and positive role models from history to build strong personal identity. The first project delivered by the organisation is the African Queen exhibition in 2017, which celebrated both real and legendary queens of Africa. Following the success of the exhibition, Christelle has been delivering workshops in schools, and has recently built upon it as the ‘Fix Your Crown’ short film.

 

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Dr Justina Mutale is the Founder & President of the Justina Mutale Foundation and its Scholarship Programme for underprivileged African Young Women. She is also Founder of POSITIVE RUNWAY: The Global Catwalk to Stop the Spread of HIV/AIDS. Named as one of Africa’s most respected names, well-known faces, and influential voices, Justina is listed in various Who’s Who Lists, Power Lists and Influential Lists.  Justina has been honoured for her outstanding and phenomenal leadership qualities as a National and Regional Stateswoman; as well as Global Leader of the Year, and Iconic Woman Leader of the Decade. She serves on the Board of the World Leaders Forum and is Global Ambassador and Spokesperson of the International Women’s Think Tank. Prior to founding her own organisations, Justina worked in the Commonwealth Secretariat in London. She is also bestselling author of ‘The Art of Iconic Leadership: Power Secrets of Female World Leaders’, and co-author of ‘Women on Corporate Boards – an International Perspective.’

kesheni

Opening prayers will be provided by Kesheniwa Aghaji is an Olorisa (Priestess) of Orisa Orisanla in the Yoruba Ifa tradition offering ceremonies for clearing, empowerment, healing, libation. She is focused on the Unfettering for personal sovereignty. She is also an artist of spiritually guided spontaneous artworks that emit a halo, an illumination – light reflecting from the drawing on the line.

 

 

Photo Credit Above: Detail from a section of the work AMAZONES dedicated to the inimitable women, old and new queens, that have inspired the artist Obi Okigbo

ARD appreciates the support of  the African Foundation for Development (AFFORD).

Africa First – Equiano and British African Struggles for Freedom

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Greetings brothers and sisters,

The 25th African Remembrance Day (ARD) will be held at The Museum of Docklands, No 1 Warehouse, West India Quay, London E14 4AL. at 1.00pm sharp on Thursday, 1 August 2019.

The day will centre around the reflection and remembrance of the suffering and experiences of millions of African men, women and children who perished in the Middle Passage and plantations economies in the New World. This year the theme is ‘Africa First – Equiano and British African Struggles for Freedom’, which considers the impact of Olaudah Equiano’s extraordinary book ‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: or Gustavus Vassa, the African’ published 230 years ago, as well as the activities of his associates in the ‘Sons of Africa’, now recognised as kick-starting organised African diaspora struggles in the UK. How have those struggles evolved from the time of Equiano and ‘Sons of Africa’ to the present.

Keynote Speaker

The great Black British History and Pan African scholar, Professor Hakim Adi. His most recent publication is ‘Pan Africanism: A History’. Other speakers include Yvonne Chioma Mbanefo, Igbo expert, author and co-organiser of the International Igbo Conference.

1st August has become a national focal point for the diverse strands of the black community to come together to reflect on our past journey, as well as sign post the future. If you are unable to attend, join us in 3 minutes silence at 3pm.

Travel to the venue:

Buses D6 / 15 / D3 / D8 / D7 / 277 / 115 / 135.

Underground DLR : West India Quay / Jubilee line : Canary Wharf

Parking : Vinci car park behind the museum on Hertsmere Road.

For further information contact :

Onyekachi – Onyekachiw@aol.com

Roy – roywilliams@gmail.com

 

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In partnership with the Equiano Society & the Museum of Docklands

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: or Gustavus Vassa, The African

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‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: or Gustavus Vassa, The African’ was published and became a bestseller in England in the same year Robespierre led the sans-culotte revolution in France, 1789! Its author, Olaudah Equiano, having bought his own freedom, had by then become a respected citizen in 18th-century England.

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© British Library Board (1489.g.50 frontispiece and title page)

230 years later, on Monday 29 April in the House of Commons, David Lammy MP, the Parliamentary sponsor, will launch a 4-day exhibition of digital images of a limited selection of pages from this book, with a soundtrack of beautifully classic Kora music by maestro Tunde Jegede. This is a unique joint enterprise by the African Remembrance Day Committee, marking its own 25th anniversary, the Equiano Society and the British Library. The poet John Agard will add his nationally-acknowledged scholarly voice to the occasion with excerpts of his 2009 publication, ‘Equiano’s Epigrams: The Interesting Narrative in Poetry’. Passages of ‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: or Gustavus Vassa, The African’ will be read by Actor and Director, Burt Caesar.

The Member of Parliament for Tottenham’s predecessor, the late Bernie Grant, championed the cause of the ARD committee from its inception in 1995.

‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: or Gustavus Vassa, The African’ is a first-person account of the harrowing tale of Equiano’s kidnap, with his young sister, from the village, believed to be in eastern Nigeria. In its pages, he recalls memories of home and the subsequent trauma of his enslavement in America and a number of territories across the Caribbean before he settled in London and Soham. It is believed to be one of the very first books in English by an African writer ever to be published in the 18th century and, in the modern era, was adjudged by the Guardian newspaper to be the 79th best non-fiction book of all time.

Also scheduled on each of the succeeding 3 days, at 5.00p.m., will be a reading of a poignant passage from the book in the Upper Waiting Hall to be presented in turn by:

Burt Caesar, one of the UK’s most revered actors; the Reverend Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Chaplain to the Speaker of the House; Bumi Thomas, a dynamic, eloquent and soulful artiste; and Carmen Munroe, arguably the UK’s most accomplished Caribbean thespian.

Public visits are welcome – Tuesday 30 April to Thursday 2 May – each day between 9.00a.m. – 9.00p.m. in the Upper Waiting Hall in the House of Commons to view the digital presentation of the text of one of the British Library’s most highly-prized exhibits and, should you wish to, to take advantage of the access to the public gallery to witness a live session of one of the committees in Parliament. It is a stated requirement that you first contact your local Member of Parliament and request to be escorted by her or him into the Upper Waiting Hall. Parliamentary protocol!

This event is part of a series during 2019 and 2020 that will mark 25 years of African Remembrance Day (ARD) on 1st August. ARD commemorates the suffering and experiences of millions of African, children, women and men who perished in the Middle Passage and during the period of enslavement and colonisation.

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24th African Remembrance Day

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ARD double copy

ARD double copy

August 1st has become a national focal point for the diverse strands of the black community to come together , performing out heritage and continuing struggle. It is important that we as a race come together to remember those ancestors who died  at the bottom of the Atlantic as a result of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The day will be centred around the reflection and remembrance of the suffering and experiences of millions of African men, women, and children who perished in the middle passage and the subsequent effect upon all people of African descent worldwide, for ever 500 years.

African Remembrance Day (ARD)

2018 will pay tribute to the ‘Windrush Generation’ – those men, women and children who came from the Caribbean to assist with the rebuilding of the UK after the war.

 

If you are unable to join us, please try to observe 3 minutes of silence at 3pm.

2016 – African Remembrance Day

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THEME: ‘African Resilience, Resistance and Renaissance in Latin America’

Monday 1 August 2016: 1pm – 5pm.

VENUE: Museum of London Docklands, No.1 Warehouse, West India Quay, London E14 4AL

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ARD 2016

To coincide with the Rio Olympics African Remembrance Day (ARD) 2016 will focus on ‘African Resilience, Resistance and Renaissance in Latin America’.

As part of remembering the millions who died over the last 400 years, and understanding the ways that the legacies of slavery continue to shape the present, ARD 2016 will explore the journey of Africans in Latin America. It will seek to provide answers to some of the following questions: Which African communities went where in Latin America? What are their stories of survival and resistance against slavery and racism? Which popular heroes and heroines emerged during those struggles? What role have they played in the broader anti-colonial struggles against Spain and the United States? How have they transformed the region’s art, music and culture? What is their current status, and how do they view themselves as a global African community at a time the African Union contemplates the diaspora as a 6th Region of Africa, and the campaign for reparations gains a new momentum?

Commemoration, Remembrance and Awareness Raising

The day will continue to mark and highlight the importance of remembering the many victims of enslavement, as well as create a solemn space which can be replicated by African communities

Engagement, Advocacy, Partnership, and Exchange

ARD 2016 will also engage with African diaspora communities from Latin America, exchange experiences and build new global African networks around the common historical experience of enslavement.

The first African Remembrance Day took place at Dover on 1 August 1995, with UK politician and leader of the African Reparations Movement (ARM), Bernie Grant MP, as keynote speaker. Over a hundred people gathered to pay their respects and commemorate the millions of Africans who perished, unacknowledged, during the last 400 years as a result of enslavement. The day acted as a memorial ceremony for the individual women, men, brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, grandmothers and grandfathers, whose suffering was acknowledged with 3 minutes of silence at 3.00pm to reflect the 3 main theatres where their suffering unfolded: the Western hemisphere, the Middle and Far East, and on the continent itself.

Since then ARD has evolved organically, expanding on the notion of Remembrance, through seminars, talks, art exhibitions, music concerts, debates, and raising awareness of the global experiences and legacies of slavery amongst African descendants in the 3 theatres. ARD is not static and has taken place in different UK cities (Manchester, Bristol, Ilfracombe) where different political leaders have been engaged to build memorials and monuments for the victims of slavery alongside those of slave owners. As a result of the engagements both Bristol and Manchester, subsequently erected memorials.

Meanwhile, the focus on remembrance and slavery initiated over the last 25 years by the Organisation for African Unity (OAU), Bernie Grant’s ARM, and supported emotionally by ARD has helped put the issue of slavery and reparations firmly on the political agenda. Critically, on 11 March 2014 a meeting of Caricom Caribbean nations in St Vincent unanimously approved a ten-point plan proposed by the Caricom Reparations Commission to achieve reparatory justice for the victims of genocide, slavery, slave trading, and racial apartheid.

ARD continues to create a space for reflection, remembrance and rejuvenation from horrors of enslavement.

African Remembrance Day (ARD) Ceremony 1 August 2016: Will be held in partnership with the Museum of London Docklands, No.1 Warehouse, West India Quay, London E14 4AL  Nearby stations: West India Quay (DLR); Canary Wharf (Jubilee)

Activities include:

• Drumming

• Prayers

Prayers are presented from representatives of all the major religious pillars in our community. ARD is meant to be inclusive, to involve the African family in all its contradictions and diversity. The day is about an Act of Love, for those who have died, and using this love for them as a basis for bringing us together in our diversity.

• 3 minutes silence

Those not able to make the trip are encouraged, at 3pm, to stop what they are doing, where ever they are and join in the moment; one minute each for the victims in East, West and the African continent.

• ARD Pledge

A short commitment not to allow a repetition of the horrors

• Keynote speech

Speeches will be made by distinguished guests on the theme of the meeting to improving understanding of the issue, and galvanise future action

• Music and poetry

Poetry is read, and drumming and acoustic music played and on occasion ritual drama is enacted in keeping with the spiritual and sacred feeling of the occasion. Artistic creativity has been an important aspect of the Remembrance Day. Art and creativity thus become an expression of life, not death. ARD celebrates the bonds we form, the communities we build communities through the process of shared symbols, shared language, shared culture, music and art.

• Closing Circle to Bob Marley’s Redemption Song

• Sharing of food , drinks and networking