Honouring Our Ancestors, The Victims Of Slavery

Every August 1st, African Remembrance Day, we link hands with our world-wide African family in the Caribbean, the Americas, the Orient, Asia, Australasia and our home continent, Africa, to reflect on the lessons and continuing challenges that have resulted from over 500 years of African enslavement.

African Remembrance Day (ARD) is a time for healing, reflection and renewal of the global African family. On this day of commemoration, which is marked as Emancipation Day in the English–speaking Caribbean and Ghana, we pay homage to the millions of African women, men and children who perished in the Middle Passage.

We also honour ancestors who survived and resisted in their every day lives, and salute those ancestors who struggled for freedom and paid the highest price. We believe that it is morally wrong that so many people should have suffered or died in such a horrific manner and be forgotten. Hence we observe three minutes of silence at 3.00 pm every August 1st, as well as seek to build monuments to their memory.

Emancipation brought certain responsibilities and our experience can only be enriched when we accept these responsibilities. It is to be remembered that Emancipation Day served not only to free the enslaved but also the enslavers.

ARD is a sacred family event, which brings together the many diverse strands of the African family and our friends in the UK. We come together in mourning for those who perished during this short but painful chapter in Africa’s long and glorious history, so critical in the development of humanity itself.

To find out what happens on African Remembrance Day, click here

Click here for a timeline of events so far.