Emancipation is the great watershed in Guyanese history, when those who were in bondage were afforded some official space within the society to pursue goals of their own choosing for the first time in two hundred years. It did not open up an unlimited gamut of possibilities for the newly emancipated of course; the caste divisions of race, the unalloyed resentment of the planter class, and any number of practical impediments made that impossible. Nevertheless, August 1, 1838, produced changes so profound in the structure of the society, that Guyana (then British Guiana) from that day onwards appeared like an entirely different country from the Guyana of July 31, 1838.

It should not be forgotten either, that it was not Africans alone who were the victims of slavery in this country; certain Amerindian groups too were subject to enslavement, although freedom for them came some forty years before 1838 when the Dutch were in control. August 1, therefore, can perhaps be regarded at least as a symbolic date for them as well. It should perhaps be explained that most of the dealings of the Dutch with the Amerindian tribes involved four nations: the Arawaks, Caribs, Warraus and Akawaios, all of which were granted immunity from enslavement at some point in the seventeenth century.  Other groups, however, were referred to as ‘slave nations’ and their members could be seized.

Essequibo had its own slave trade, where members of certain tribes were bought or captured and then sold. Most of them were taken to Suriname, although some were sold to the authorities and planters here, particularly in Essequibo and later, in Demerara. (Berbice had very few Amerindian slaves.) While they did not perform the same work as their African counterparts, they were still regarded as ‘chattels,’ endured the same plantation conditions, were subject to the same draconian laws and suffered the same horrendous punishments. They too ran away, and sometimes took part in risings. A thought should be spared for their historical experience as well today.

Those who crowded the churches on August 1, 1838, were the same men and women who had been ‘apprentices’ – a glorified form of enslavement since they remained bound to the plantations – the day before. Yet they showed their resourcefulness and capacity for forward planning without further ado, some of them pooling their savings to purchase estates for their villages. The story about them transporting the money for these to Georgetown in wheelbarrows is absolutely true; the enslaved had not been allowed to own specie, hence they had to accumulate small coinage in order to pay for their purchases.

In a massive movement of people, thousands of them eventually left the plantations to try and carve out their own future paths in the teeth of difficult odds. Others of them grasped the importance of education at an early stage, and attempted to enter the world of the written word and confront the system at that level. One man, for example, opened a small lending library in Plaisance, although nothing is really known about it.

Most important for giving the ‘Creoles,’ as they came to be known, a voice in the wider society were the black newspapers, the most effective of which was the Creole. This paper was not afraid to challenge the planter views given printed expression in the press, more particularly in the Colonist. For the duration of its existence, the Creole forced the planters in the Colonist letter columns at least, to acknowledge the existence of the perceptions of the majority, even though they were excluded from participation in many areas of the society, especially the political sphere. Sometimes the debate between the two organs could be quite acrimonious in tenor.

The drive for education among some of the African forebears which produced a cadre of schoolmasters in the first instance, lawyers and later still, doctors, etc, laid the groundwork for the emergence of the well-educated African middle class of the twentieth century. In the end, even the humblest homes wanted their children to do well in school, and education was seen as the avenue to advancement. As is well known, Africans came to staff the civil service at lower levels; while their educational status made them good bureaucrats, the colour bar prevented them from rising through the ranks until very late in the colonial era.

As said above, the men and women who wasted no time exploring the possibilities that had opened up to them, were the same ones who years before had laboured under the yoke of enslavement. It was not just the ancestors from the post-emancipation period, therefore, who contributed to the evolution of the new society; it was also those who had preceded them in the slavery period. In circumstances where even their very humanity was denied, they managed to create little spaces in the interstices of the system to organize their own social relations, generate small sums through the sale of their own chickens or produce, engage in religious practices, evolve traditions and have their own entertainment. In other words, they defied all attempts by the plantocracy to deny their intrinsic humanity, and through their resourcefulness and tenacity created something meaningful to pass on to their successors. As far as it was in their power to do so, therefore, they developed a cultural inheritance for the next generation. It was no small achievement.

And they had always had their dreams, and on occasion took enormous risks in order to try and translate these into reality. Today especially, we should remember  the sacrifices of those who were born, worked and died in bondage, and for their dreams and creativity under the most oppressive of conditions.