Exhibit Of Bermuda’s Slavery Archives Opens

Minister Neletha Butterfield recently opened the Bermuda Archives Slavery Exhibit featuring Bermuda’s pre-emancipation period and displaying selected narratives written in the early 1830s by three women of very different circumstances.

Pictured below from left to right are CedarBridge Academy students along with Mrs. Kalmar Richards, Principal of CedarBridge Academy and the Minister Neletha Butterfield:

Minister Butterfield said, “The display was created by two Bermudian archival trainees at the Bermuda archives, Nicole Simons and Mandellas Lightbourne. They prepared the display to put a local face on an institution that occurred throughout the English-speaking colonies from the early 17th century until the 1st August 1834, the day of emancipation of slaves in the British empire. In Bermuda 4,203 enslaved persons were freed on the 1st August, 1834.”

“The Bermuda archives’ display features selections written on the eve of emancipation (in the late 1820s and early 1830s) by three women of very different circumstances. The display’s curators used archival sources and published narratives to highlight what were understandably the differing perspectives of two domestic slaves and one visiting privileged Englishwoman. I invite you all to study these differing perspectives and consider how we may relate our own modern views to those experessed by Mary Prince and Suzette Lloyd, one hundred and seventy years later.”

#BermudaBlackHistory #BermudaHistory #SlaveryInBermuda

Category: All, History