The Jamaica Reparations Movement (JARM) archive of papers, booklets, newspapers, and other materials collected by reparation advocate and JARM founder Barbara Blake Hannah has been handed over to the National Library of Jamaica.

The archive represents a record of the work done in the first years of Jamaica’s official call for reparation, and the collection will now be available to students and researchers on reparation, and on Jamaican political history, for all time.

Blake Hannah started JARM after she attended the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism (UN-WCAR) in Durban, South Africa, where the overwhelming number of interventions on reparation from the global delegations made the conference organisers set up a separate plenary to deal with it, to which she was appointed.

After returning to Jamaica, Blake Hannah first set up a website, then a committee, and wrote a solemn declaration of what Jamaica’s position and call for reparation should be, with objectives, structural proposals, and a plan of action. At the first JARM meeting, 30 people committed to reparation attended and signed the solemn declaration as the conference document.

The JARM became the public voice of the Jamaica reparation movement, and Blake Hannah worked single-handedly on keeping the flame alive for seven years until she could no longer do the work by herself.

In 2008, she handed over the solemn declaration to then-Minister of Culture Olivia Grange and asked her to encourage the Government to take charge of reparation. The minister set up a parliamentary committee to discuss the steps forward for the Government, after which she set up the National Council on Reparations.

The JARM archive collection of papers provides some rare documents from the UN-WCAR Conference, including speeches, copies of the conference newspaper, a copy of the rare document “The Aruja Declaration: The Legal Basis of the Call for Reparations”, and over 100 newspaper clippings of letters and articles published in Jamaica from 2001-2007, that show in print the work that has been done from Rastafari started calling for “repatriation with reparations” in the 1930s.

Over the years, more and more European organisations have recognised and admitted their share of blame for the ills of Caribbean chattel slavery, and taken steps to pay reparations. Churches, universities, businesses, shipping companies, industries and individuals have made apologies and payments as reparation, and more continue to be added to the list.

On June 7, 2024, the JARM archive was received by National Librarian Beverley Lashley, in the presence of Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport Olivia Grange, who thanked Blake Hannah for her years of advocacy, and said she hoped the important donation would inspire other Jamaicans to follow her example and place historic documents in the National Library.