The Prime Minister of Antigua & Barbuda has vowed to launch an “unrelenting campaign” to get Harvard University in the United States to pay reparations to his country.
Browne said he was personally getting involved in the matter after Harvard did not respond to two letters sent by US Ambassador Sir Ronald Sanders.
“So the matter has now been elevated to the level of the prime minister,” Browne disclosed over the weekend.
“I have written to the President of Harvard and I am hoping that they would at least extend the courtesy of a response, because it is well known that the endowment for the creation of the law school came from the profits that were generated here during slavery,” the prime minister said.
Two centuries ago, Isaac Royall, Jr. provided land in his will for Harvard to endow a professorship of law, physics, or anatomy. In 1815, Harvard chose to create a professorship of law, which would eventually serve as the foundation for Harvard’s fledgling law school. Harvard Law School was not officially established until 1817.
Royall, Jr.’s wealth derived from the Massachusetts farms and a sugar plantation in Antigua he had inherited from his father—properties that relied on and profited from slave labor. The Royalls were a prominent slave-owning family in the small Caribbean country in the early 18th century.
Prime Minister Browne said, “They owe the people of Antigua and Barbuda, those of us who are the descendants of black.”
“And when I say owe they owe us it’s because profits which were repatriated from here were earned on the backs of the black people, enslaved people that they used to build their law school and they must provide some reparatory justice to the people of A&B. We will be unrelenting on that issue.
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The Royal family owned and operated one of the largest slave trading companies. That is where they made their money. They built ships in Boston then sailed to west Africa and traded for slaves who they sold in Barbados, Antigua, Jamaica and Boston.
You need money so bad, so you want to shake down these people. Money money money. This county need money, because, ABLP suck up the little we had.
Good job Mr. Prime Minister! Make them pay.
Reparations Browne:I am coming to get my two cutlasses.To chop wood and bun coal.By the way I need a pair of rubber boots in case I step in knee high dung.Thank God for my grandparents and parents.They made sure my chains fell off,my heart set free.Gaston Browne is now leading the SLAVERY MARCH.You say you have $30 million in your coffers.How did you get those monies? Were you Gaston Browne involved in the trading of SLAVES?? Or did you invests in those financial establishments.That were involved in taking in Slaves Traders Funds? JUST ASKING !!
It’s shameful that people are uninformed about reparations that has been owed for centuries ie…@AWG and @BLACK-MAN. Recently, Yale rewarded UWI reparation funds for education. If the government were to be rewarded the monies owed to the people of the Caribbean it can only be used for such purpose. Harvard owes million of dollars to Antigua and other islands and should pay. Its a shame that it becomes political banter and assumption of self dealing. People wake up and demand the money that is rightfully yours.
Rass-Hole Professor:
I know about reparations.I do know what it is all about.I am not uninformed at all.Gaston Browne jumps on all band wagons and want to take over to be noticed.No one with an ounce of common sense.Would listen to Gaston Browne and or Ronald Sanders.Like I said in my previous comment.My chains fell off a long time ago my heart set free.I am not enslaved to anything or by anyone.
Mr. PM please channel your reparations negotiations through UWI, they have done a good job so far and they have the resources and skill sets to provide receipts through their research unit.
The ambassador is not a respected person in the US and Harvard would not be inclined to deal directly with a politician or even head of government.
Notes From A Native Son Of The Rock! “Ethical Badmindedness” – which Dr Paget Henry and his colleague Dr. Gordon define as an ethical discourse in which people are seen as acting out of bad motives rather than good ones: “acting out of spite, out of hate, acting with the intention to deceive, to dominate the other or to advance oneself at the expense of another.” Mi Gud Fren that quote begins this comment as a reminder to all that this ought not to be engaged with from a historical referent point of partisanship!
Your comment that UWI should be the channel is not being discarded given that The UWI Five Islands Campus is now a reality! (The Reverend George Weston) would begin a story by saying, ‘You don’t know your own history!’ and would go on to tell us what he knew of the Black man’s legacy in Antigua.” – Dr. Gregson Davis and Margo Davis: Antigua Black!
When GoAB invited the Ambassador to pursue the issue of Reparations with Harvard University, this mere voice lauded the intent but suggested the names of other Antigua and Barbuda interlocutors! Not because the Ambassador was not a Respected Person in the US or eminently qualified but did so from a position of having spent a lifetime studying and understanding the administration and management of planning in the Academy with close and intense collaboration from Academic and Foundation Development Departments!
The PM would be well advised, as this mere voice suggested in the past to begin discussions with Antigua and Barbuda’s Academics in the USA! Will GoAB do so, is doubtful given a nativist penchant which ignores the potential contributions from Academics in the American Diaspora! Two prominent academics in the US are Dr. Gregson Davis, Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities, Duke University; and, Dr. Paget Henry, Professor of Africana Studies and Sociology, Brown University, respectively two US Ivy League Universities!
Both distinguished scholars are natural to begin this journey! Specifically with N. Gregson Davis, all students and seekers of knowledge of some of the best products from the Rock are encouraged to surf the web from Tanner/South Streets, the Davis family home and Hilda Davis School, to AGS at age nine, to Harvard University at 15 and at 19 became the first Black Man to deliver the Graduation Oratory in Latin at Harvard in 1960! LEST WE REMEMBER, His sister Cecille two years his senior had also attended Radcliffe and also graduated magna cum laude! They made Time Magazine in that year! Think about that, in the period when we were still a colony of Britain! The West Indies Federation was still struggling to overcome the Insular and geopolitical destructive and forces that led to its collapse in 1962! Neither The Civil Rights Act nor The Voting Rights Act had been contemplated much less passed in the US! The Washington March 1963! March Selma 1965! In addition to his stellar professorship at Stanford, Cornell and Duke Universities (Ivy League Universities) he served as in Administration as Chair and Dean at Cornell (four years) and Chair and Dean at Duke for 15 years! “Gregson has been happily married to Daphne, also a native of Antigua, since 1980!” His brothers and sisters on the Rock would be better able to speak to his competencies and fit for such a noble task! Respect!
Dr. Paget Henry should be no surprise to anyone on the Rock! He has been the Rock Of Ages for an Antigua and Barbuda Institution: the Annual Antigua and Barbuda Conference or the UWI/ABSA Conferenec now going into its 15th year and the Review of Books by Antigua and Barbuda Authors! Paget “has served on the faculties of S.U.N.Y.Stony Brook, Open University of the West Indies (Antigua) and the University of Virginia and also as an external examiner for the University of the West Indies and the University of Guyana! His specializations are Dependency Theory, Caribbean Political Economy, Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Art and Literature, Africana Philosophy and Religion, Race and Ethnic Relations, Poststructuralism, and Critical Theory. He is the author of Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy (Routledge, 2000), Peripheral Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Antigua (Transaction Books, 1985), and co-editor of C.L.R. James’s Caribbean (Duke UP, 1992) and New Caribbean: Decolonization, Democracy, and Development (Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1983).”
The Bona Fides of these two Antigua and Barbuda Scholars complemented with UWI’s world wide academic recognition should be fully examined as GoAB – hopefully in conjunction with all stakeholders – ponders it’s decision to reengage Harvard by laying down its Reparations Marking: delineating a cultural boundary around the reparations cultural space in this the International Decade for People of African descent!
“We must be prepared to act upon our interpretation of what is in the best interest of black people, that is, black people as an historically oppressed population. This is the fundamental necessity for advancing the political process.” – Dr. Molefi Asante!
How about the reparation used to provide scholarships for Antiguans and their descendants. That would be benefit the best and brightest that could benefit from an Ivy League education.
You can be assured that the trustees of Harvard are well aware of the Antigua PM and Ambassador. They negotiate and meet with professionals of all walks of life from all over the worid. The Harvard legal team might be holding out, so that the Antiguan representateves can present a sound proposal.
The people of Antigua can start a petition, and send it to the Harvard Trustees and Officers. This should get the dialogue going, and show that the residents of Antigua are unified.
@BLACK-MAN your nativity and lack of common sense is evident of the real rass hole. 😋
hmmm….well said Sir.
@Dessalines the ambassador and the PM is not respected in the US. UWi should take the lead especially since we have a campus. I almost vomit when i read the headline though. Its the same man who told the chinese if they ready to colonize us bring their gifts and come.
History you have tried me and found me not Guilty
Attempting to touch my soul
Arousing ! Deep black pains
500 years of slavery should not
Go so easily
So many years of wrong should be made right
Remember Auswitzh and Belsen
How they cried
Europe’s pain to their own and how
They died
Tell us history why try
But now the time has come to purge
Their conscience
Volkswagen and Siemens did pay
Millions to surviving families
But me black me still carry the scars
Of who I am
Wooly hair and conscious like a liberated black man
While my ancestors cry in limbo
The beating of drums
Gave me strength while I sleep
But when I awake
I will remember and children the story
of Slavery
Of many, many years when they took us away
And not paid one cent for that unpardonable wrong
Like those of other lands
Because we are so many
Like waves of sand
And not enough money in the World
To pay the black people
Like me
By
Rybonski
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