December 19, 2010

Bright Colors of Freedom

The pier for the cruise ships in Nassau leads directly into a building with shops and tourist information. You can pose with this replica of a Junkanoo costume.

The Junkanoo Parade is a celebration of freedom left over from the days of slavery. The slaves had very few days off so when they finally got a couple of holidays around Christmas time, they held a celebration.

We were not in Nassau very long but I was fortunate to come across the Pompey Museum of Slavery and Emancipation. I was reading a book called Sugar Changed the World in order to write a review for Amazon Vine and it went into detail about slavery in the Caribbean, which was generally more horrific and deadly than slavery in the United States. (The death rate of slaves on sugar plantations was so high that huge numbers of slaves were imported just to replace those who died or were maimed. Did you know that 96 percent of slaves taken from Africa to the Americas went to the sugar-producing areas of the Caribbean and South America?)

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