Happy Africa Day Dominica!

{Just thought I’d draw this excerpt from my 2011 publication titled “an Unassuming Love” Black Memory, A Traveloguer& Cricket” (www.xlibris.com). I do so in the context of Africa Day being celebrated in Dominica in coming days. It’s an excerpt from a United Nations representative – Steinberg}.

… Sometime before the end of March (2011), in the context of Slavery and Abolition

of the Slave Trade, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Mijiro,

mused on the power of human spirit to overcome injustice and the harshest of

exploitation.

He said, “this International Day of Remembrance is part of our collective effort to regain at least some of what was lost. Continuing scholarship, including through the efforts of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), has documented, not only the terror of slavery, but also the contributions of enslaved Africans. That is why the theme of this year’s Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, is ‘the living legacy of 30 million untold stories.’

“This observance honours the best in all of us and warns of the worst. It is an opportunity to acknowledge the horrific tragedy that for centuries remained buried, and to assign it its proper place in the human conscience.

“It is an occasion to praise the endurance and courage of the victims, and to accord them the dignity that was so absent in their lives.

• Happy Africa Day Dominica …

“It is a moment at which we credit their contributions to civilization;

to agriculture, science and architecture; to religion, culture and politics; to the

culinary arts and so much else.

“And it is a day to commend the bravery and conviction of all those who fought against slavery.

“Let us remember that enslaved Africans themselves were in the vanguard of the movement to abolish the slave trade and slavery itself.”