Prime Minister Andrew Holness says the rebuilding efforts of Jamaicans following the devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa last October reflect the spirit of our ancestors in their fight to overcome oppression.

In his Emancipation Day message, the prime minister maintained that the same spirit that led our ancestors to freedom will carry Jamaicans through recovery following the Category 5 storm.

“In the months since Hurricane Melissa, communities across Jamaica have borne real loss and taken up the hard work of rebuilding—neighbours helping neighbours, families repairing homes, communities restoring what the storm sought to take,” Holness said.

“The endurance, faith, and cooperation that carried our ancestors out of bondage will carry us through reconstruction,” he continued. “And we are determined to rebuild not only what stood before, but something stronger and more resilient, so that no storm can undo in a night what a generation has built. ”

He also noted that freedom without economic opportunity is incomplete, sharing visions of generational wealth and widened access to education, landownership, housing, employment, and entrepreneurship.

“We honour them when we educate our children, care for our elderly, build honest businesses, protect our communities, and conduct ourselves with dignity. We honour them when we reject prejudice and injustice. We honour them when we refuse to allow the circumstances of our birth to determine the limits of our ambition,” he said

Holness added, “Emancipation is both an inheritance and an instruction. It tells us where we have come from, but it also calls us to decide what we will become.”

See Holness’ full message below:

Prime Minister’s Emancipation Day Message to the Nation

Emancipation Day calls us to remember one of the most consequential turning points in our history. On the first of August 1838, full freedom came to the formerly enslaved people of Jamaica after centuries of bondage, exploitation and injustice.

That freedom was not freely or generously given. It was secured through the courage, resistance, and endurance of generations of our ancestors. Some resisted openly. Others preserved their dignity through faith, family, culture, work, and community. They refused to accept that the condition imposed upon them defined their worth or limited their claim to humanity.

Today, we honour them.

We remember those whose names were recorded in history and the many more whose names are unknown.

We remember the mothers who held families together under brutal conditions; the fathers who struggled to protect and provide; the spiritual leaders who sustained hope; and those who risked everything in the cause of freedom.

Their victory was the assertion of a fundamental truth: that every human being is created with dignity, conscience, and the right to determine the course of his or her own life.

Emancipation gave our ancestors legal freedom, but it did not immediately give them property, education, economic security or equal access to opportunity. They entered freedom with very little material wealth and with institutions still shaped by the inequalities of slavery.

Yet they did not wait passively for others to build a future for them.

They established free villages. They purchased land, built churches and schools, created businesses, cultivated farms, and formed strong communities.

They understood that freedom had to be supported by ownership, education, discipline, cooperation, and faith.

We have seen that same spirit in our own time. In the months since Hurricane Melissa, communities across Jamaica have borne real loss and taken up the hard work of rebuilding—neighbours helping neighbours, families repairing homes, communities restoring what the storm sought to take. The endurance, faith, and cooperation that carried our ancestors out of bondage will carry us through reconstruction. And we are determined to rebuild not only what stood before, but something stronger and more resilient, so that no storm can undo in a night what a generation has built.

True freedom is the capacity to make responsible choices, to provide for one’s family, to own property, to pursue education, to establish a business, to worship according to conscience, and to participate fully in the life of the nation.

Political freedom without economic opportunity is incomplete. Legal rights without personal responsibility cannot produce lasting progress.

The promise of Emancipation must therefore be renewed in every generation through the work of creating a society in which every Jamaican has a fair opportunity to advance.

We must continue to widen access to education, landownership, housing, employment, and entrepreneurship. We must build an economy in which effort is rewarded, enterprise is encouraged, and families can accumulate assets that may be passed from one generation to the next. We must recover that spirit of self-reliance and enterprise.

At the same time, Emancipation reminds us that freedom must be protected from every form of domination. No Jamaican should live under the control of criminals, gangs or violent men who seek to govern communities through fear. A community cannot be truly free when children are afraid to walk to school, when businesses must pay extortion, or when families are forced to remain silent in the presence of wrongdoing. The struggle for freedom therefore continues wherever law-abiding citizens are denied peace, security and opportunity.

We must stand firmly for law, justice, and order. We must strengthen families, support responsible parenting, and teach our children that freedom carries duties as well as rights. We must reject the idea that discipline is oppression, that accountability is hostility, or that personal responsibility can be replaced by permanent dependence.

The strongest tribute we can pay to our ancestors is to use our freedom well.

We honour them when we educate our children, care for our elderly, build honest businesses, protect our communities, and conduct ourselves with dignity. We honour them when we reject prejudice and injustice. We honour them when we refuse to allow the circumstances of our birth to determine the limits of our ambition.

Emancipation is both an inheritance and an instruction. It tells us where we have come from, but it also calls us to decide what we will become.

Let us therefore continue the work of building a Jamaica in which freedom is supported by opportunity, independence by ownership, rights by responsibility, and hope by purposeful action.

May we remain worthy of the sacrifices of those who came before us.

May we preserve the freedom they secured. And may God continue to bless Jamaica, land we love.