A statue commemorating the struggle against slavery at Jamaica’s Emancipation Park in Kingston. | Photo: Earl Bousquet.

All other CARICOM (and wider Caribbean) nations have similar cases of national heroes and freedom fighters who had been demonized by the colonial authorities.

The launch of the Center for Reparations Research in Jamaica in October included other matching local events, enough attention to which may have been dwarfed by the international acclamations that followed, but which ought not to escape regional and international attention — and acknowledgment.

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A Marcus Garvey Musical was held at the popular Little Theater in Kingston; and the iconic Jamaican national hero’s son, Dr. Julius Garvey, a U.S.-based medical doctor, also delivered a separate lecture at his alma mater, the University of the West Indies.

A feature address by Samia Nkrumah, daughter of the late Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, also drew much deserving attention that could also have drowned the applauds for historic local events happening at the same time.

Before the launch, a significant related political development took place in the Jamaica Parliament: presentation of a resolution to "pardon" Sam Sharpe, Paul Bogle and Marcus Garvey, national heroes accused and condemned by the slave masters and the colonialists of committing crimes in pursuit of freedom for enslaved and colonized people.

There had also been an official government decision to pay reparations to victims of a police raid in 1963 that took the lives of Rastafarian and other protesters CONTINUE READING