Joan Andrea Hutchinson (left), director of communications, in discussion with Professor Verene Shepherd, chairperson of the Jamaica National Bicentenary Committee (JNBC), at the Jamaica National Heritage Trust-JNBC media briefing at Headquarters House, Duke Street, yesterday. -Junior Dowie/Staff Photographer

Minister of Tourism, Entertainment and Culture, Aloun Assamba, has invited Jamaicans 'to pull out all the stops' this year in participating in the celebration of Emancipation and the abolition of the British transatlantic slave trade.

"Do not negate what we have gained as a nation and what our ancestors fought for," Mrs. Assamba said yesterday during a media briefing held at the downtown Kingston offices of the Jamaica National Heritage Trust (JNHT).

The JNHT and the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC), two agencies that fall under the Ministry of Tourism, Entertainment and Culture, along with other sister agencies will this year be partnering for the upcoming Emancipation events and the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic trade in Africans (TTA), under the theme 'Our Freedom Journey Honouring Our Ancestors'.

Plans in high gear

Plans are in high gear for extensive celebrations, which will begin at the Sovereign Centre, Liguanea, St. Andrew, on July 28 and culminate with the National Emancipation Vigil and Emancipation Jubilee, July 31-August 1, to be held at Seville, St. Ann.

The event this year, which will be a part of the TTA, will be open to all Jamaicans at no cost.

In a charge to Jamaicans to pay tribute to ancestors, Joan Andrea Hutchinson, JNHT director of communications, urged her countrymen to "take up the mantle and run with it!"

She said: "Until the leopard writes his own history, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter."