The ob­ser­vance of eman­ci­pa­tion is an im­por­tant part of na­tion build­ing to­day for sev­er­al rea­sons. Progress in an ex-colo­nial, mul­ti-eth­nic so­ci­ety with a his­to­ry of vir­u­lent racism re­quires psy­cho­log­i­cal heal­ing for deep wounds. Our so­ci­ety can­not ma­ture and heal while we all car­ry the bur­dens of slav­ery buried in the deep­est re­cess­es of our minds and con­scious­ness. The de­scen­dants of the en­slaved are bur­dened by shame, self-doubt even self-ha­tred. The de­scen­dants of slave own­ers car­ry the weight of guilt mixed with ra­tio­nal­is­ing no­tions of su­pe­ri­or­i­ty and mis­sion­ary ac­com­plish­ment. They ex­press re­sent­ment at be­ing iden­ti­fied with the deeds of their fore-par­ents. Oth­er im­mi­grant groups have ab­sorbed the myths and had their place in the so­cial struc­ture de­fined in im­por­tant ways by the folk­lore of a so­ci­ety root­ed in the slave ex­pe­ri­ence.

We can­not as a na­tion over­come the shack­les un­til all can look back and first of all ac­knowl­edge the his­tor­i­cal re­al­i­ty of that shame­ful pe­ri­od called chat­tel slav­ery, the griev­ous wrong and the pain as well as the tri­umphs of the hu­man spir­it. The psy­cho­log­i­cal ten­den­cy of whites and Africans to pre­tend it did not hap­pen, for dif­fer­ent rea­sons, pre­serves the sick­ness that slav­ery pro­duced. We can­not build a na­tion un­der a veil of hypocrisy, hid­ing im­por­tant truths about our­selves. We need to face them and af­firm the so­ci­ety's com­mit­ment to purg­ing the lega­cy of the pe­ri­od. We do not have to fear the hor­ror of the past. We have to draw the ap­pro­pri­ate lessons from it and ded­i­cate our­selves to build­ing a so­ci­ety that will nev­er again tol­er­ate such an evil.

Fur­ther we need to de­vel­op an aware­ness of his­tor­i­cal con­text that bal­ances the episode of post-Colum­bus slav­ery against a longer-range view of the evo­lu­tion of man and civ­i­liza­tion. Eman­ci­pa­tion is an im­por­tant pe­ri­od for self-analy­sis by the na­tion. The act of eman­ci­pa­tion in 1838 was the ini­ti­a­tion of a process, a jump­start on the road to Free­dom and na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. We need from time to time to ex­am­ine our so­ci­ety, check the land­marks along the long road we have trav­elled from bondage, re­assess our goals and achieve­ments as we strive to build a free, just and egal­i­tar­i­an so­ci­ety. Eman­ci­pa­tion nat­u­ral­ly puts a na­tion­al fo­cus on the African com­mu­ni­ty. In the right en­vi­ron­ment this presents the op­por­tu­ni­ty for oth­er groups in the so­ci­ety to de­vel­op a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of Africans thus so­lid­i­fy­ing the ba­sis for racial har­mo­ny in our na­tion.

Har­mo­ny can on­ly be achieved through the de­vel­op­ment of mu­tu­al re­spect and un­der­stand­ing. For Africans them­selves, who have the strongest emo­tion­al ties to eman­ci­pa­tion, the oc­ca­sion is one for deep­en­ing self-knowl­edge and re-build­ing self-es­teem. Eman­ci­pa­tion pro­vides us with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to pay trib­ute to in­dige­nous he­roes through­out the re­gion who or­ga­nized, strug­gled and sac­ri­ficed to make us free, those whose names are known such as Tou­s­saint, Dessalines, Bouk­man, Cuffy, Nan­ny, Daa­ga, and the many name­less an­ces­tors who some­times paid the ul­ti­mate price. We can cel­e­brate the hero­ism of all those whose for­ti­tude in the face of hor­ror has made our ex­is­tence pos­si­ble, with due cred­it to those who took up the bat­tle in Eu­rope as well. The recog­ni­tion of he­roes is an im­por­tant as­pect of na­tion­al in­spi­ra­tion and iden­ti­ty.

Be­cause of the na­ture of slav­ery this recog­ni­tion adds to a sense of Caribbean iden­ti­ty. Gen­er­al­ly, the an­nu­al eman­ci­pa­tion is of re­gion­al and hemi­spher­ic sig­nif­i­cance. The is­lands of Trinidad and To­ba­go, un­der yoke of Chat­tel Slav­ery, were fly­specks in the much wider web of bondage that en­tan­gled the West­ern Hemi­sphere for 400 years. Be­fore 1838 on­ly the Haitians had suc­ceed­ed in break­ing the yoke. This was part of the con­scious­ness of our fore-par­ents. Dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry the cel­e­brants of eman­ci­pa­tion in the Eng­lish- speak­ing Caribbean added to the wider sig­nif­i­cance of their free­dom by cham­pi­oning the cause of those who were still en­slaved in the Unit­ed States and ter­ri­to­ries held by oth­er Eu­ro­pean pow­ers in the Caribbean, Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca.

Look­ing at our im­me­di­ate con­cern, the date Au­gust 1st is di­rect­ly sig­nif­i­cant to all of the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean and it can there­fore be one more ral­ly­ing point for re­gion­al uni­ty. At present six ter­ri­to­ries have eman­ci­pa­tion hol­i­days on that date. On the glob­al scale suc­cess in the move­ment to bring an end to chat­tel slav­ery rep­re­sent­ed a turn­ing point in the re­la­tions be­tween peo­ples of the great­est in­ter­na­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance. The pe­ri­od of chat­tel slav­ery rep­re­sent­ed the low­est moral de­base­ment of man ever on such a wide scale. Its abo­li­tion was an act of moral lib­er­a­tion for all of hu­man­i­ty. (Ex­tract from ESC pub­li­ca­tion, His­to­ry and Rel­e­vance of Eman­ci­pa­tion)