INTERNATIONAL REMEMBRANCE DAY TO BE OBSERVED AT KEY WEST AFRICAN CEMETERY

A Key West tradition of the new millennium continues on Sunday, August 20, 2017, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., with the Annual Observance of the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and of its Abolition, at the Key West African Cemetery memorial monument on Atlantic Boulevard, just west of White Street and adjacent to the West Martello Tower brick fort at Higgs Beach in Key West, Florida.

The Annual Observance is both solemn and celebratory, as an occasion to pause and reflect upon what our collective Ancestors, of all nations involved, endured in the Middle Passage, as the forced Transatlantic migration of millions of souls for more than four centuries was known,  welcoming prayers and meditations from diverse religions and spiritual traditions, along with the creativity drummers, musicians, visual and performing artists, and open “Village Talk” for the sharing of thoughts, ideas, suggestions, and insights from participants, to affirm  that the sufferings and sacrifices of so many lives were not in vain, and to resolve that today and tomorrow will be made better than yesterday.

The occasion especially recognizes the legacy of the physical, mental and spiritual strength and heroism of all of the victims of that barbaric human trafficking, which built nations and fortunes for the perpetrators, and commemorates the inspiring courage of those who fought for decades to bring it to an end.

In Key West, the global observance specifically honors the memory of the 295 refugees, mostly youngsters, buried at the African Cemetery site in 1860, having never recovered from their sufferings incurred during the ocean crossing, even after the care they received in the southernmost city, where they had been brought among a total of 1,432 captives rescued by U.S. Navy steamships from three illegal American-owned slave ships bound for Cuba, and where they were welcomed, housed and provided for by the U.S. Marshal and local residents during their twelve weeks of detention while awaiting being returned to Africa, a circumstance which drew national attention and press coverage, and significantly heightened the debate that would make Civil War inevitable.

Traditionally held on the Sunday closest to the actual August 23 official date, proclaimed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1998, the International Day is the anniversary of the beginning of the successful Haitian Revolution on that date in 1791, to underscore the fact that Africans themselves played the principal role in bringing about the legal Abolition by the European colonial powers and the United States of centuries of the so-called “slave trade.” 

Admission to the Remembrance is free and open to the public, who are invited, but not required, to bring offerings of flowers.

For further information, call 305-904-7620, or inquire via email at [email protected].

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