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Stabroek News

Dear Tacky groundings
published: Sunday | April 9, 2006


SHEPHERD

THE TACKY Rebellion commenced on Tuesday, April 8, 1760, in St. Mary. In recognition of the role of this rebellion in Jamaica's history, an annual Tacky Day is organised during the first week of April. The annual Tacky Day Lecture forms part of the Tacky Day activities. Below is an extract from the lecture delivered in the form of a letter by Professor Verene Shepherd in April 2005.

DEAR CHIEF TACKY, OUR BRAVE GA ANCESTOR:

I feel very privileged to have been invited to speak at a function to honour you during a week that marks the 245th anniversary of the war you and your supporters fought in the interest of St. Mary and wider Jamaican freedom. You were all African soldiers fighting on arrival for your survival, and I join all gathered here in Claude Stuart Park to pay tribute to you.

Chief Tacky, you would be pleased to know that your legacy of activism lives on in the many sons and daughters of St. Mary who each day try to make this parish, and by extension this island, a better place for all. The Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) says that the parish is more economically challenged than other parishes in the island, but we know that it is unmatched in terms of the talent of its citizens and the potential that resides in its many young people, some gathered here today.

You would also be pleased to know that the people of St. Mary have never forgotten you and your exemplary life of activism. Not only have they built a monument to honour you and organised an annual ritual of commemoration to celebrate your work, but they have named a school and a waterfall after you. The monument in your honour stands defiant in a location where black people once felt unwelcome: right in front of the courthouse, a traditional symbol of oppression; beside the Anglican church that was the planters' church; right in the churchyard burial site for the elite. In fact, it would amuse you to realise that your monument is located right next to the tomb of the white planter, Charles Price. He would probably get up and run if he could! For imagine being trampled on by a bunch of slave descendants! How times have changed!

But Tacky, while the people of St. Mary have done all they can to keep your heroic struggles before the public gaze and to showcase your wonderful life of agency, the wider Jamaican society does not appear to appreciate your place in the island's history. If it did, you would have been declared a National Hero long ago. Look at what you and other Africans in St. Mary endured and accomplished! I will rehearse these for those who do not know or who are suffering from historical amnesia:

Against all odds, you fought for freedom from enslavement, not just for yourself but also for others. You endangered your life in the process, raiding Fort Haldane for weapons, drumming up support from estates like Esher, Ballards Valley, Trinity, Heywood Hall and elsewhere; you had to fight against the British military out in the open because the war escalated so quickly that you and your supporters barely had enough time to conceal yourselves within the tradition of gurrilla warfare. Above all, you had to negotiate skilfully with the Maroons so they would not fight against you.

And while the number of casualties on each side will never be known with any certainty, we know the war took a heavy toll on your people, many of whom were killed in battle. Others chose suicide rather than surrender, some had to face execution by judicial order and still others were deported, some to the Bay of Honduras. But you and your troops also took out quite a few of the oppressors. The Governor is thought to have under-reported the number of white casualties, admitting to just 16 ; but a high of 40-60 were reported by contemporary writers.

How nice it would be to build a war memorial to all the others from the parish who fought for freedom and died for the cause but who are still unrecognised.

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