Slavery Remembrance Day

History of Slavery Remembrance Day

The International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition was created by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) at its general conference in 1988. The first Slavery Remembrance Day was celebrated in Haiti in 1998 and other countries followed suit, like Senegal in 1999.

UNESCO chose August 23 as the official day for slavery remembrance because of its significance in the history of the transatlantic trade. From the night of August 22 to the morning of August 23 in 1791, the first major slave uprising during the transatlantic slave trade happened in Saint Domingue in modern-day Haiti.
The uprising was called the Haitian Revolution and it lasted for 13 years, from 1791 to 1804 when the former French colony got its independence. Thousands of slaves all over Saint Domingue rose in a revolution and attacked their slave masters. It was a defining moment in the history of slavery, and it had a major impact on the abolition of the slave trade around the world.

The transatlantic slave trade began in the 15th century with the Portuguese as the first slave traders in the triangular slave trade. The triangular trade referred to the triad involved in the slave trade – Africa, which supplied labor, the Americas which received them, and Europe which paid for them. Slave trade was made worse by Europe’s discovery of the American content with its sugar plantations. This led to an increased demand for unpaid labor in the form of slaves.

The African continent was the most affected by the transatlantic slave trade. The Europeans considered them inferior and used this as justification for their racist ideologies. They also discovered that Africans managed to survive even under grueling conditions — the cruelest of all being slavery.