AS part of its ongoing efforts to engage students and academics, the Jamaica Library Service last Tuesday hosted a public lecture on the history of the slave trade in the Caribbean.

The lecture, entitled ‘The Trans-Atlantic slave trade: Reparation and our livity’, was delivered by Professor Rupert Lewis from the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona and staged as part of commemoration activities for the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade.

Students from schools across the Corporate Area – including Clan Carthy High School, Vauxhall High School and Dunoon Technical High Schools – made the trip to listen to the lecture and were treated to demonstrations of ancestral drumming and singing, as part of the preliminary activities.

Lewis, meanwhile, said the bicentenary anniversary of the slave trade presented a viable opportunity for the discussion of reparations. He noted that Black people today owed it to their ancestors to argue for reparations.

“We owe reparations to ourselves and our ancestors, who first made the call,” he said, adding that British planters were paid 20 million pounds to cover their losses after the abolition of slavery.

At the same time, the professor said Caribbean governments needed to make the issue of reparations central to their national public policies. He also urged that governments take examples from the actions of the Jews, who in recent years successfully lobbied for reparations for the trauma they endured in the holocaust at the hands of the Nazis during World War II.

“I think we can learn from the Jewish tradition because the Jews spent a lot of time talking, writing, making films, ensuring that there are proper museums images,” Lewis said.

The UWI professor dismissed as unacceptable the notion of accepting apologies from European governments for their role in slavery, instead of reparations.

“I don’t think that sorry should be accepted if we consider the scope and inhumanity of the slave trade,” he said, while urging his audience to ensure that no effort is spared in making symbolic reparations to the African forefathers.

Symbolic reparations, he noted, involved retaining aspects of our African heritage and traditions in honour and remembrance of their struggles.

7 facts about the trans-Atlantic slave trade

. The trans-Atlantic slave trade was a multi-trillion pound industry by today’s financial standards.

. Most of the slaves that went to the Caribbean were captured in the African interior.

. After capturing fellow Africans during times of tribal warfare, some Africans would sell the prisoners into slavery or trade them for weapons and supplies.

. Some Africans hung themselves, starved themselves and even jumped overboard from slave ships into shark-infested waters to avoid being shipped to the Caribbean as slaves.

. It is estimated that at least 1.2 million slaves were brought to Jamaica between 1700 and 1808.

. Among the slaves brought to the Caribbean under slavery, it is estimated that two-thirds of them were between the ages of 18 and 30.

. In 1860, the population of Africa was 25 million. It is estimated that today the population of Africa would be more than 60 million if the trans-Atlantic Slave trade had not occurred.