Eric Falt | ‘Redemption Song’: In remembrance of the slave trade

Each year on March 25, the United Nations commemorates the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. This year’s theme, ‘Justice in Action’, calls on the world to confront history with honesty, while acknowledging the impact of this tragic moment.

For Jamaica, it is a renewed occasion to consider a past that profoundly shaped the island’s identity, culture, and resilience.

UNESCO has played a central role in relation to the reflection on the transatlantic slave trade. For more than 30 years, the organization’s Slave Route Project has connected communities, scholars, and heritage institutions across continents to document, preserve, and interpret the history of enslavement. The project seeks to anchor memory in education, cultural exchange, and tangible heritage.

Sites or memory, linking local histories in Jamaica to broader transatlantic narratives are crucial. Port Royal, once the bustling heart of commerce in Jamaica, now serves as a vivid example of UNESCO’s approach to heritage. Its underwater ruins, a testament to both wealth and human exploitation, offer Jamaicans a space to engage with the realities of slavery, colonial trade, and resilience. The recognition of such sites as part of the World Heritage emphasises the importance of connecting local and global histories, ensuring that the stories of enslaved peoples are neither forgotten nor abstracted.

COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH

Beyond Jamaica, Gorée Island in Senegal, the forts and castles along Ghana’s coast, and other African locations provide context for Jamaica’s experience, reminding us that the slave trade was a global enterprise whose consequences are still felt. A comprehensive approach to memory is needed, one that spans oceans, cultures, and generations.

UNESCO also extends its commemorative efforts to documentary heritage. The Memory of the World Programme, for instance, has inscribed the British Slave Registers on the International Register, providing detailed records of enslaved individuals across the Caribbean. These documents, kept at the Jamaica Archives and Records in Spanish Town, give names, dates, and identities to those who might otherwise be reduced to numbers, creating opportunities for historical research, genealogical inquiry, and education.

The recognition of emerging sites such as Seville Heritage Park is also important. This Taino and then European settlement is intertwined with the island’s colonial past and the slave trade, and its preservation allows communities and visitors to explore the economic and human dimensions of Jamaica’s early modern history.

HONOURING RESILIENCE

Remembrance is multifaceted, combining physical spaces, documentary evidence, and education to create enduring memory. Across the globe, including increasingly in the Global North, there is recognition that confronting this history openly is essential.

The last two decades have seen a surge in dedicated foundations and museums related to this issue. In the United States, the Slave Wrecks Project was created in 2008. It undertakes underwater archaeology of slave ships, linking public education to research in ways that were unheard of decades ago.

In the United Kingdom, the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, opened in 2007, offers comprehensive exhibitions on the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies. Several foundations now exist in the Netherlands. France, too, has deepened engagement, with organisations such as The Foundation for the Memory of Slavery, created in 2019.

For UNESCO, remembering the transatlantic slave trade is about honouring resilience, acknowledging contemporary legacies, and shaping a future grounded in truth, dignity, and justice. The International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade challenges societies, including former colonial powers, to reckon with uncomfortable truths, to educate widely, and to connect the lessons of history to the challenges of today.

LIVING DIALOGUE

Jamaica’s centrality in the transatlantic story makes local engagement vital. From Port Royal to Seville Heritage Park, from archives to educational programmes, the island is actively involved in a network of memory.

But remembrance is not passive; it is an act of justice, an assertion of dignity, and a call to educate future generations. As Bob Marley reminded the world in Redemption Song, the work of memory is also an inner task, one that calls on us to emancipate ourselves from inherited silences and to face history with clarity and courage.

On March 25, Jamaicans and their global diaspora are invited to confront the past openly. I encourage each reader to step into history: visit a site of memory, explore archives online, or delve into the stories of those whose lives were shaped by slavery.

Share what you discover with friends, family, or across social media, allowing the echoes of the past to spark conversation, reflection, and a deeper understanding. In doing so, remembrance becomes not just an act of witnessing, but a living dialogue that connects us all.

Eric Falt is the director and representative of UNESCO for the Caribbean region, covering the English- and Dutch-speaking countries.