Every year on July 31, on the site of an 18th-century coffee plantation in the Jamaican village of Woodside, there is a reenactment of Emancipation Day in 1838 when the slaves were freed by Royal Proclamation.
People perform a memorial play, cite the proclamation and debate its meaning. The characters ask, ¡°why should God save the queen and not the people?¡± and ¡°How come there was no apology for our enslavement?¡±
That is the dark legacy of the British empire, but there are brighter sides too.
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