My fellow Jamaicans,
Today holds profound meaning and solemn pride. It is a moment of reverence, remembrance, reflection, and reaffirmation. A day when we pause to honour the struggle, suffering, and sacrifice of our ancestors, while also drawing inspiration from their strength to shape our path forward.
It is also a day where we take stock of where we have come from and commit never to do anything that could compromise our freedom, or impact our trajectory towards the better Jamaica our ancestors dreamed. A Jamaica where we have complete financial and economic freedom, freedom from crime and violence, freedom from unemployment and freedom from any restraint that could prevent us from realizing our individual and collective potential as a nation.
Emancipation Day holds significance not only for Jamaica but for the entire world. The abolition of slavery was not merely a historical event, it was a seismic moral awakening. It marked a decisive turning point when an institution, once regarded as lawful, even natural, was confronted and condemned as a crime against humanity.
The formal end of slavery in the British Empire in 1834, followed by full freedom in 1838, ignited a wave of abolition across the globe over the remainder of the 19th century. It signalled that no system, no matter how entrenched or profitable, could forever deny the dignity of human beings. The struggle for Emancipation was a chapter in a global awakening of conscience, and Jamaica stood at the forefront of that fight.
But beyond its global relevance, Emancipation Day is deeply personal for us as a people. For Jamaicans, it is not an abstract milestone. It is the hard-won triumph of our ancestors who endured the unspeakable horrors of slavery on plantations, in pens, and under the lash. It is the declaration that those who were once regarded as property were, and had always been, fully human, fully worthy, and fully free.