London Hosts First Memorial Service for African Slave Trade

In the first memorial service held for victims of the transatlantic slave trade and African Holocaust, speeches, poems and musical performances livened up London's Trafalgar Square Sunday.

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"This is the first ever memorial service for the victims of the transatlantic slave trade to be held in Trafalgar Square," one of the event's organisers, Shezal Laing stated, adding that, "This is the start of something that will only grow each year."

Laing explained that while there is an international slavery remembrance day on the 23rd of August, it largely passes by unnoticed, with many people unaware that such a day even exists.

“(This) is unlike other days such as Remembrance day … and Holocaust memorial day,” she said.

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Standing next to Nelson's column, a staggering monument inside the Square which commemorates Admiral Horatio Nelson, who died at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, British hip-hop artist and activist Akala said: "When we remember World War One or Two or Nelson, Nelson's Column is right here, this is ancestor worship, remembrance of the past, that's patriotic and sensible. When Black people remember their victimhood at the hands of the British Empire and colonial slavery, apparently they should get over it and it's all in the past, even when the legacies of said brutality are still here with anti-Black racism and police brutality and mass incarceration and things of that nature."

The event was held two days before the United Nations' International Slavery Remembrance Day, giving participants the chance to think more deeply about the impact of the slave trade.

13-year old poet Kush recited the following lines at the event: "We do not forget, we remember, who ignores the truth, who ignores the history, who forgets our suffering. Our enemies cannot hide from the ancestors' eyes."