Guyana marked Emancipation Day on August 1—188 years since the end of chattel slavery—but Dr. Karen Abrams warns that celebration without courage reduces freedom to ritual, stripped of its real meaning.

In her op-ed, “Emancipation Is Also the Courage to Speak,” published in Kaieteur News last Sunday, the Founder and Executive Director of STEMGuyana and Pathway Academy delivers a sobering reflection on what emancipation truly demands—linking the quiet resistance of enslaved Africans to the modern-day silence she believes is taking hold in society.

Abrams shifts the focus from the well-known rebellions and uprisings to something less celebrated but equally powerful: the everyday defiance of enslaved people who refused to surrender their humanity.