On Friday 23rd August, Liverpool will be coming together in celebration and commemoration, as the 20th Slavery Remembrance Day takes place.
This year, people are being invited to join a Walk of Remembrance through the city centre. The route will take in Liverpool One and passes the site of the historic Old Dock where slaver ships would once have moored and been repaired.
On Thursday 22nd and Friday 23rd, the International Slavery Museum will also be running events, including displays, talks, Katumba drumming and screening printing activities.
UNESCO chose 23rd August as the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition (Slavery Remembrance Day) as it commemorates an uprising of enslaved Africans on the island of Saint-Domingue (modern Haiti) in 1791. The day pays homage to the many lives lost as a result of the transatlantic slave trade, and it also celebrates the survival and resilience of African and Caribbean people and their cultures.
Liverpool was the European capital of the transatlantic slave trade, responsible for half of Britain’s trade. More than 4,500 slaver ship voyages were made from the city. The ships set sail from Liverpool with goods and weapons, which were exchanged for enslaved men, women and children mainly on the west coast of Africa who were then taken across the Atlantic in a horrific journey known as ‘the Middle Passage’. Ships departing Liverpool would go on to carry an estimated 1.5 million enslaved Africans into slavery.
When: 22nd – 23rd August 2019
Where: Liverpool city centre
£: Free
More info: www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/srd
Leave a comment