Verene Shepherd | Why a monument to the enslaved at Appleton Estate?

On February 27, about 100 people gathered at Appleton Estate in St. Elizabeth to witness the unveiling of a monument to the enslaved Africans, claimed as property by various members of the Dickinson family up to 1838 when slavery was finally abolished. J. Wray & Nephew Limited (JWN), a member of the Campari Group, which acquired the sugar plantation way after the abolition of slavery and the departure of the enslaving Dickinson family in the late 19th century, had finally paid tribute to those who had contributed to the development of Appleton Estate.

Appleton’s story traditionally begins with the Dickinson family, the relatively unremarkable members of the minor English gentry whose earliest traceable predecessor was a certain Thomas Dickinson, recorded in the year 1594 as a cook at Eton College. His son, William, was rector of the villages Appleton and Besselsleigh on the Oxfordshire/Berkshire border during the English Civil War (1642-51). William and his wife Mary had several children, the eldest of which, Edmund, became a court physician to Charles II and James II, the last Stuart Kings of England and Scotland. William’s youngest son, Francis (1632-1704) “acquired” lands that once belonged to the Tainos, decimated by colonisers, primarily in what would become the parish of St Elizabeth, thus making him the progenitor of what was, arguably, one of Jamaica’s most prominent planter dynasties.

We know about this family and their activities in Jamaica because of several sources, including the Dickinson Papers held in the Wiltshire Record Office and the Somerset Archives as the Dickinsons, like so many others enslavers, became absentee plantation-owners and followed the tradition of foregoing colonial repositories and instead depositing their family papers in their native county archives.

The monument “Lest We Forget” was designed and constructed by 26-year-old Jamaican, Trishaunna Henry, a teacher at Glenmuir High School in Clarendon. I applaud her because her monument reminds us, simultaneously, that our ancestors resented forced labour in the cane fields, and at the same time, fought for liberation from the cane’s stranglehold. This monument will, no doubt, be welcomed by those who wish to remember and honour our ancestors (some of whose names are inscribed on the monument) but resented by those who have no understanding of, nor use for, history and would prefer to forget the past.

FIVE REASONS

I spoke at the launch and highlighted five reasons why, in my view, there is now this monument at Appleton Estate:

1: J. Wray & Nephew and the Campari group listened and took action based on a recommendation made by the Centre for Reparation Research, after reviewing, at the company’s request, the “Rum Tour Experience.” The company was anxious to respond to public criticisms levelled by some visitors that the tour represented a sanitised version of its history; that the contribution of enslaved peoples who worked on the Appleton Estate received no mention in the narrative of the introductory video and of the tour guides. The most severe criticism that I saw came from someone signing as V. T., whose letter of the day in The Gleaner in 2018 was titled “Appleton Estate Tour Whitewashes History.” It was this letter that animated conversations on radio shows, including those hosted by Jodi-Ann Quarrie on Power 106 FM and by me on Nationwide 90 FM.

2: Monuments to honour enslaved Africans, however modest or contested, are already part of the Jamaican landscape. Among these are the monument at Black River to those men, women, and children on the slaver Zong from Ghana, who were deliberately drowned by the crew before it disembarked the survivors at Black River in 1781; the Freedom Monument behind the Civic Centre in Montego Bay that records the names of those who were punished for fighting for freedom in the 1831/32 Emancipation War led by Samuel Sharpe; and the monuments to enslaved Africans who worked on the former Mona and Papine sugar plantations, now the site of the Mona campus of The University of the West Indies.

3: The history of Appleton sugar plantation that started with the Dickinson family from the UK, who bought our ancestors, enchained them and treated them like goods and chattel; and the obligation of its inheritors based on what enslaved people contributed to its beginnings, to honour that legacy – even as we still search for any surviving Dickinsons who profited from this plantation to bring them to the attention of reparation campaigners. The Durban Declaration and Programme of Actions reminds us in Article 13 that “slavery and the slave trade, including the transatlantic slave trade, were appalling tragedies in the history of humanity not only because of their abhorrent barbarism but also in terms of their magnitude, organized nature and especially their negation of the essence of the victims. Honouring the victims in any way helps to reclaim their humanity.”

4: Jamaica’s obligation as a Member State of the United Nations to implement the Programme of Activities for the International Decade for people of African descent (2015-2024), which calls on States to:

• Promote a greater knowledge of, and respect for, the diverse heritage, culture, and contribution of people of African descent to the development of societies;

• Give recognition to the victims and their descendants through the establishment of memorial sites in countries that profited from and/or were responsible for slavery, the slave trade, the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism and past tragedies where there is none, as well as at departure, arrival, and relocation points, and by protecting related cultural sites.

5: The importance of iconographic decolonisation in societies that have been scarred by colonialism and where the decolonisation process must include ensuring that the images of the colonisers are replaced by the images of the colonised or that new monuments to heroes and heroines are built. This project is not only for former sugar plantations; it is also for banks, churches, communities, insurance companies, and schools, led by examples from the State. In this regard, we await the taking down of the statues of Christopher Columbus and Queen Victoria and their confinement to a museum as to maintain them in such public spaces is an insult to our Taino and African ancestors and an affront to the majority of the people of Jamaica.

Jamaica is lucky to have such talented artists like Trishaunna Henry who can build out our ideas and place them in a tangible way on our landscape. The present owners have understood the importance of the weight of history and the connectedness of the journey from the Dickinson family to the Campari Group. Other former plantations that are profiting in the present from the pain of the past should follow Appleton Estate’s example.

Send feedback to reparation.research@uwimona.edu.jm