Disappointed by the low turnout at this year’s Emancipation Day celebrations, Minister of Pan-African Affairs and Heritage Trevor Prescod called on Barbadians to reclaim their history through collective action and announced new educational initiatives centred on reparations and Black studies.

Addressing a modest gathering at this year’s Emancipation Day celebrations at Haggatt Hall, Prescod said emancipation should be viewed as an ongoing struggle rather than a single historical event. He urged citizens to safeguard the freedoms won through generations of resistance.

“Freedom is not a fixed thing. If you don’t protect it, you lose it,” Prescod warned, drawing parallels to historical slave rebellions across the region. “The oppressors had to come to a decision on the 1st of August 1834… as a result of the forms of resistance that we put up as a people.”