The Editor, Sir:

It is with sadness that I read Martin Henry's column "Kingston Harbour: Green space and slavery memorial" which appeared in The Gleaner on May 17. Why should we create a monument to slavery? What is so uplifting about slavery or the slave trade that should be celebrated? Slavery is a stain on the history of Africans and all black people.

Africans allowed themselves to be taken captives by small groups of European and shipped like cattle to the West Indies and America. This went on not for one or two years but for hundreds of years. Where was the will, the courage or the tactical skills of the black man to outwit the white man or to destroy him and his savage enterprise? What is there to celebrate or memoralise about Africans who were complicit in aiding the white man in enslaving his brother? Let us create monuments to our triumphs not memorials to inferiority.

I am, etc.,

R. OSCAR LOFTERS

Lofters1@aol.com

Kingston 8

Via Go-Jamaica