Black History Month sponsored by the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights (CRER) in collaboration with the Africa in Motion (AiM) Film Festival
Film screening: 6pm – 7.30pm
This event begins with a film screening of Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North (2008) directed by Katrina Browne, a descendent of the largest slave-trading family in the US: the DeWolfs of New England. On their journey from Rhode Island to the slave forts on the coast of Ghana, and then to the ruins of a family plantation in Cuba, ten family members confront the thorny topic of how to engage with their ancestral links to the slave past and contribute to issues of ‘repair’. The documentary raises important questions that apply to post-slaving nations as a whole. What are the legacies of slavery? What history do we inherit as individuals and as citizens? What would repair – psychological, spiritual and material – really look like and what would it take to achieve it?
Public debate: 7.30pm – 9pm
The film is followed by a public debate on the legacies of slavery and reparations led by three expert panelists:
Paul Sutton is a retired academic with many years experience of teaching, writing and researching on and in the Caribbean. His presentation will focus on Scotland’s links to the Caribbean in historical and contemporary context, as an introduction to the current debate on slavery reparations.
Esther Stanford-Xosei is a Jurisconsult, reparations legal specialist and internationally acclaimed reparationist. She serves as the Co-Vice Chair of PARCOE, the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe. She will be outlining the goals of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) and will be thinking through ways to affect transformative reparations. Central to her approach is the importance putting Afrikan people and the ISMAR, rather than governments, in the driving seat of leading the justice process.
Mario Gousse is an active member of the Haiti Support Group and has been involved in the Reparations movement through his work with the Haiti First Haiti Now Reparations Campaign. He will be addressing the issue of reparations with specific reference to Haiti as the first Black-led, post-slave, post-colonial nation state.
Date: Thursday, 29 October
Venue: African Caribbean Centre, Oswald Street, Glasgow
Cost: Free event but booking essential. To book tickets click here
For more info contact [email protected], 0141 418 6530
To download the full programme of events for Black History Month 2015 please click here