DURING THE PERIOD leading up to Independence, many Barbadians were oppressed by the hands of the white man on the island, says cultural activist and author Baba Elombe Mottley.
“Beginning at Emancipation, too many black men were free and white men thought they were idle. And before Independence, Barbados was white dominated and they never let us forget that,” Mottley said.
He made the claims before a packed auditorium at the National Union of Public Workers headquarters last Wednesday night, during a lecture entitled After 50 years, Are We Truly Emancipated?
“I challenged both [Errol] Barrow and [Cameron] Tudor that Independence is not about a flag, it is not about an anthem and it is not about a pledge,” he said.
“There are fundamental things that had to be changed about Barbadians’ perception of themselves and black people who had built a nation and who had contributed tremendously to the development of that nation, even though they had never been given the recognition for it,” he said. (RA)
Please read the full story in today’s Daily Nation, or in the eNATION edition.
