Tuesday, August 23 was the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. The theme for the 2022 UNESCO awareness day is “Stories of Courage: Resistance to Slavery and Unity against Racism.”

The UNESCO awareness day honors a key event in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, a 1791 uprising on the island of Santo Domingo which is today Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The uprising triggered the Haitian Revolution against the French colonial powers.The first recorded transatlantic vessel carrying enslaved Africans was in 1520.

The transatlantic slave trade lasted 366 years.In those centuries at least 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped and loaded onto crowded ships bound for locations where they were forced to labor.  Over 1.5 million died on the way.

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