“Oh Lord, de glo­ri­ous morn­ing come … Am­bakaila.”

The above head­line was that of the chantwells, and it cel­e­brat­ed the walk to free­dom of the eman­ci­pat­ed Africans from en­slave­ment, as the phys­i­cal chains were re­moved. To­day, the in­her­i­tors have to be fo­cused on go­ing af­ter com­plete eman­ci­pa­tion to achieve their full hu­man­i­ty; of which their an­ces­tors were de­prived.

A sound un­der­stand­ing of the his­to­ry of how the Africans were brought to a “New World” cre­at­ed by Eu­rope is crit­i­cal to that eman­ci­pa­tion. A gen­er­a­tion ago, Bob Mar­ley ad­vised: “Eman­ci­pate your­self from men­tal slav­ery, none but our­selves can free our minds.”

So eman­ci­pat­ed, peo­ple of African de­scent must cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for them­selves to con­tribute and share equal­ly in the shap­ing and de­ter­min­ing of how the ma­te­r­i­al and non-ma­te­r­i­al world of the 21st cen­tu­ry will evolve. You who have been eman­ci­pat­ed must equip your­selves to par­tic­i­pate in the world of phys­i­cal en­deav­ours; in de­ter­min­ing how world phi­los­o­phy—the head­space of mankind—evolves; in how the eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits of world re­sources can be eq­ui­tably shared.

In trib­ute to the ef­forts of their an­ces­tors, African-de­scend­ed peo­ple must as­pire and achieve a space in the de­ter­mi­na­tion of world pol­i­tics; in hu­man en­deav­our; in the re­shap­ing of the in­ter-re­la­tion­ships of coun­tries and in­di­vid­u­als; in world lead­er­ship; in the ex­ploita­tion and pro­tec­tion of the re­sources of the plan­et; in every as­pect of hu­man life.  

And while African de­scen­dants in T&T may not have the pow­er of lever­age over what hap­pens at the glob­al lev­el, the gen­er­a­tions re­moved from the plan­ta­tions in this space and time must place them­selves along­side all oth­ers in this so­ci­ety. It is on­ly from such an achieved and pro­claimed oc­cu­pied stance that the eman­ci­pat­ed African de­scen­dant can ful­fil the am­bi­tions of those who walked off the plan­ta­tion.

One im­por­tant les­son that the in­her­i­tors of 19th-cen­tu­ry eman­ci­pa­tion must recog­nise is the knowl­edge that free­dom was not a gift to their an­ces­tors. Phys­i­cal, and “pas­sive re­sis­tance” mea­sures were strate­gies adopt­ed by the Africans to help force their free­dom. Sub­se­quent to the ac­tu­al date when the en­slaved Africans were able to leave the plan­ta­tion as free men and women with their chil­dren, they en­gaged in many a bat­tle to ad­vance free­dom be­yond the re­moval of the chains.

The chal­lenges of to­day have changed in na­ture, but they are no less de­mand­ing for those who as­cend­ed from the eman­ci­pat­ed African. They must first per­ceive them­selves as be­ing en­ti­tled to win a right­ful and el­e­vat­ed place in so­ci­ety.

Every gen­er­a­tion has its chal­lenge. The his­to­ri­an Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Er­ic Williams, point­ed to the school bag, ed­u­ca­tion, as the means for­ward for all, in­clu­sive of the chil­dren of the eman­ci­pat­ed. To some ex­tent, that chal­lenge has been tak­en on board by the gen­er­a­tions since po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence.

It is, how­ev­er, vi­tal for the in­her­i­tors to pur­sue mea­sures to place them at all lev­els of so­cial and eco­nom­ic ad­vance­ment.  

True eman­ci­pa­tion of a so­ci­ety made up of sev­er­al peo­ples must al­so in­clude those whose an­ces­tors par­tic­i­pat­ed in the in­hu­mane degra­da­tion of the African peo­ples. Such gen­er­a­tions now have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to di­vest them­selves of what­ev­er ves­tige re­mains of su­pe­ri­or­i­ty and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices against African-de­scend­ed peo­ples. Eman­ci­pa­tion is for every­one.