The Celebration of Black History held at Taino Cove on February 5 was a great success. Lots of folks turned for this night of celebration.

Among the entertainment was the Epping Forest Primary School culture group, The Treasure Girls Culture Group, drumming, traditional dancing including Kumina and Bruckout, fire dancing, belly dancing, poetry by Louise Bennett, Black History and Jamaican History facts, and lots and lots of good music and dancing with a special birthday celebration of Bob Marley songs!

You can view photos here or by the link in the Photo Gallery

Looks like you all had a great time. Will have to plan my vacation to coincide with the celebrations next time.

Whose Black history did you all celebrate? Then perhaps you shouldn't post this for fear we are all going to argue about it.

Quite right. But which Africa was celebrated?

Watusi, Zulu, Ashanti, Masai, Karo... Or do we blend them together and call the mix 'Africa'?

The music will grab anyone. It comes from the heart. That's why bucky massa banned drumming. Tossing and turning while heartbeat rythms reminded of forgotten ancient memories repressed by society at the time.

My take on "Black" history is all inclusive but the constant is the African connection. It may be African Jamaican, African American, African Brazilian etc etc.

Celebrating Black History in America is understandable, based on their history, but why do Jamaicans celebrate?

A bunch of us had a reasoning session the other day about reparations for the descendants of African slaves in Jamaica. We ran across the dilema of the dividing of such treasure.

Figured I would get 1/16 of a whole portion, others more. Some less sable, less. There may be some in Jamaica that do not have the blood of the Africans that crossed into the Middle East some 200,000 years ago. They have much recent history to celebrate. Much to mourn too. They would recieve a whole portion. Guess we'd have to do DNA testing eh?

I celebrate all of my ancestors 100% each. Which one should I omit? The flamenco and books of my Sephardim and Moor, the drums and stories of my Africans or the Druidism/Paganism of my once blue painted wild Celts?

Their memories are in my every cell.

I do agree that we should celebrate who we are each and every day. But Africans in America never had a chance to do that. They are a people who have contributed so much to the American society yet beaten, scorned and spit upon, denied an education, proper housing and employment, because of their skin color. Thank God for noble people like Marcus Garvey, Malcom X, Martin L. King and Rosa Parks, to mention a few, who fought, sometimes to their deaths for the right to celebrate their pain n just 28 days (shortest month of the year). This is a joke. We just don't know the amount of blacks in America who are suffering from mental slavery (Bob Marley). It's a painful, horrible pain that is hard to understand by many of us Jamaicans who never suffered or experienced slavery like they did.

As a Jamaican living in the USA, I am regularly reminded of the low esteem in which many Jamaicans hold African Americans. Without getting into the many reasons for this unfortunate fact, I try to explain our differencies like this: After Emancipation, West Indians were given a lot more opportunities to prosper. After Independence we were given "brown-skinned" rule, until a man of Hugh Shearer's complexion could become PM, for example.
African Americans, to this day, are still waiting for their forty acres and the mule they were promised. So I ask my fellow Jamiacans not to look down on Blacks in America because the road they have traveled, and are still travelling, has been much different than ours.

In the years after the Morant Bay Rebellion, Gordon’s defenders provided a
counternarrative (to that advanced by the brown and white elite) by maintaining
his innocence and portraying him as a martyr and hero. It is significant
that his earliest defenders expressed their views outside Jamaica.
In the aftermath of the rebellion, the colonial administration had directed its
repressive measures at the laboring classes in St. Thomas-in-the-East and
its brown and white critics. Sidney L. Levien, a Montego-Bay-based Jewish
journalist, who had gained “considerable notoriety by reason of his editorial
attacks on Governor Eyre,” was arrested and taken in a sloop of war to
Morant Bay.14 Both Levien and another white critic, Dr. Robert Bruce of
Vere, narrowly escaped Gordon’s fate (Jacobs 1973:103). The effect of these
actions was to stifle dissenting political opinion from any quarter. As H.G. de
Lisser remembered in 1913: “It was the custom in this country not long ago,
whenever any one was busy agitating for something or other, to say to that
person: ‘Remember Gordon!’ The warning conveyed a threat: ‘They hanged
Gordon, take care they do not hang you.’”

From Howard Johnson's 'From Pariah to Patriot'.

Now you know where my big mouth comes from.

Listed below are some of the reasons (I don't know it all) why blacks in America celebrate their history. They invented:
Elevator, letter drop box, filament for the light bub, cotton machine, stop light, automatic gear shift for cars, refrigerator, heating furnace, air conditioner, electric trollies. Blacks in America also created the world's first blood bank and it was an African Am. doctor who performed the first heart surgery. Dr. Ben Carson, a black man, also performed the first and separated the cojoined twins. All the above and more was never recorded as part of the American history.

Student, you lost me as to the reasons some of us hold certain feelings towards black americans. Are you saying we got our 40 mules and they did not? I have been asked point blank by my friends about the negative vibes between us and i never thought of any one of your reasons. Black americans do not envy us, some say we limit their chances at moving ahead since we increase the pool of minority workers by migrating here. That is certainly true. On the other hand I have many black american friends that accept and even welcome us as bros and sisters. Their history is a different one to ours, blacks are the overwhelming majority in our country, we have a homogenous culture for the most part; they are a minority here several times over. American black celebration is to remind them of the struggles that they had to endure just to be considered citizens of their country. This month also celebrates their people who have excelled within the system and those who fought (and died) to change the system. While we may not share their history, we who have been living here face pretty much the same struggles that they now face, some moreso than others. I join all my black american friends in celebrating their history. I may also point to a telling question that someone asked on this thread, They understand why americans celebrate black history month but why do we? It never dawned on me before now that we did, but I would beg to also celebrate with my fellow jamaicans.

Hi G. I haven't stated that Americans envy us. What I'm trying to get across is that I have noticed in the USA that many Jamaicans are prejudiced towards Afro-Americans. We are told not to date them, that they are lazy, untrustworthy, etc etc. That this prejudice exists is anecdotal but it is not just my opinion.

As far as "forty acres and a mule", no we were not given that literally. But we were given small plots of land to cultivate. Historically, we never had to deal with Reconstruction, Segregation and Jim Crow. Today, for the most part, we don't exactly have to deal with "red-lining" when we apply for a loan at the bank; we are not usually told by the landlord that the apartment has been already been rented, or that the job has already been filled, and so on. This difference in history creates a different psyche in an entire group of people which no doubt creates a different attitude and a different reality; a parallel universe if you will.

Respect Student.