INTERNATIONAL ‘SLAVE TRADE’ REMEMBRANCE IN KEY WEST ON AUGUST 27

On Sunday, August 27, from 6:00 -8:00 p.m. the southernmost city in the continental United States will join a global Remembrance and celebrate its own unique local heritage with its 2023 Annual Community Observance of the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition at Key West African Cemetery at Higgs Beach, 1074-94 Atlantic Boulevard, west of the White Street pier and adjacent to the West Martello Tower brick fort.

This International Remembrance has particular importance in Key West, whose geographic location was the nation’s closest point to the major historic human trafficking routes known as the Middle Passage (or so-called transatlantic “slave trade”) to the Americas and the Caribbean, in addition to being situated along the critical shipping lanes of the Florida Strait, thus accounting for the city having multiple direct connections to this horrific chapter of our common heritage.

For example, even after any further importation of African captives into the U.S. was outlawed in 1808 following the stunning success of the Haitian Revolution (which was mainly fought and won by African-born enslaved forced laborers), Key West would serve as a vital stopover for ships engaged in the coastwise “domestic slave trade” routes from the Upper to the Lower South.

Yet, remarkably, in spite of being amidst all of this highly profitable perverted commerce in human beings, as if they were commodities or livestock, Key West’s role would prove to be most often that of a haven and refuge for Africans rescued from this trafficking, rather than of yet another port of entry for captives to be sold on auction blocks into life sentences at hard labor in the service of human greed.

Such was the case of the survivors of the 1827 wreck of the illegal Spanish slaver Guerrero off Key Largo who were rescued by salvors who brought them to the southernmost island city, and even more notably in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, when 1,432 Africans aboard three American-owned slave ships bound for Cuba that were captured by the U.S. Navy were brought to Key West, where their detention for twelve weeks became a national sensation among journalists and curiosity-seekers, and heightened the increasingly acrimonious debate about slavery in Congress.

It was during that detention of a total of rescued Africans that Key West’s citizens and government officials, notably U.S. Marshal Fernando Moreno, distinguished themselves by their generosity, providing food, clothing, blankets, and hastily built housing for the refugees.

However, in spite of the community’s best efforts, 295 of the Africans, mostly children and youths, succumbed to the illnesses and horrors they had endured during the ocean crossing, and these were buried at the site of the African Cemetery where the International Day observance will be held, their lives tragically and senselessly wasted.

Key West’s connections also include the discovery of the1700 wreck of the English slave ship Henrietta Marie, the dramatic “domestic slave trade” saga of Mr. Sandy Cornish, and nationally known exhibits and digital ar chives at the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum, among others.

Today, with these and numerous other connections to “slave trade” history and heritage, this distinctive role in the struggle for freedom and equality continues as Key West leads the nation in observing the two International Days of Remembance related to slavery, March 25 and August 23, always observed locally on the Sunday closest to those official dates.

The August 23 date commemorates the beginning of the Haitian Revolution in 1791, to underscore the fact that the primary and most successful Abolitionists were Africans themselves, who inspired powerful and courageous allies throughout the hemisphere and beyond.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural organization (UNESCO) declared the International Day in 1998, and it was first celebrated in Haiti that year before spreading to global recognition.

According to the official UNESCO website, “This International Day is intended to inscribe the tragedy of the slave trade in the memory of all peoples. In accordance with the goals of the intercultural project “The Routes of Enslaved Peoples”, it should offer an opportunity for collective consideration of the historic causes, the methods and the consequences of this tragedy, and for an analysis of the interactions to which it has given rise between Africa, Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean.”

Admission to the Remembrance, which includes prayers, history, performances, and open=mic “Village Talk,”  is free and open to the public. For further information, call 305-766-4922.

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