Enslaved Emancipation 1838

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception


To reflect on the words of the late Rex Nettleford: Full free “meant not just the abolition of slavery ... it meant the emancipation of an entire society from the debilitating transgressions of incarceration manifested in the incivility of relations between human beings, the traumas of chronic resistance by violence and otherwise and the cruelties of counter-resistance on the part of those who held dominion over the life, limb, and spirit of majority of souls. It meant an end to the absence of that most precious of ingredients for civil society - the freedom from fear. And it also meant the stalling of the deterioration of character among both the owners and the owned. The jailers and jailed were, indeed, in jail. In addition, the release of the jailers and the jailed from that prison of obscenities prepared our society to offer safe entry to all who came after that, into a free society” (R. M. Nettleford, 1994).