Prendergast: More lectures on Sam Sharpe needed to educate Montegonians

WESTERN BUREAU:

DR PATRICK Prendergast, the campus director at The University of the West Indies (UWI) Western Jamaica Campus, is advocating for more seminars similar to the recently held Sam Sharpe Flames of Freedom Lecture, to emphasise to residents the importance of knowing one’s culture and history.

Prendergast’s call, during the event hosted at the Montego Bay Cultural Centre in St James, came ahead of the December 28 Flames of Freedom Torch Run celebration at Tulloch Castle in the parish, where National Hero Samuel Sharpe’s historical Christmas Rebellion was launched in 1831.

“We need to talk about the city of Montego Bay as ‘the’ city of Montego Bay and not put any other kind of label on it, whether Second City, ‘third city’ or ‘fourth city’, but ‘the’ city of Montego Bay. Until we do that, we will never truly appreciate the value of Sam Sharpe, the values that came out of that particular period in Jamaica’s history, the history of our emancipation movement, the value of resilience, empowerment, and emancipating ourselves, and the value of standing on our feet instead of living on our knees,” said Prendergast.

“This is a call for more of these lectures, because it would give us an opportunity to get beyond just the lectures as they are being presented. What it does is that it reinforces the significance of placing history in relativity of truth, and what I am getting to is a call for more of these kinds of engagements, so we can lift the intellectual discourse within the city space,” Prendergast added.

INSUFFICIENT INFORMATION

Sam Sharpe historian Shalman Scott, who delivered the keynote presentation during the Flames of Freedom lecture, acknowledged that there was a need for more readily accessible information on Sharpe and his contemporaries.

“The first thing we need to do is to be responsible and to find good-quality information for our people, and to show respect to our people. When Sam Sharpe was to be made a national hero, there was not sufficient information on the Sam Sharpe rebellion, and they had to go to England to the Public Records Office for the information,” said Scott, a former mayor of Montego Bay.

“With all the writings that were done, it did not amount to anything much, and the information that we now have about these people has come out of a trip to England,” Scott added.

The lecture was part of a series of activities held to honour the memory of Sam Sharpe and other slaves who were executed in the aftermath of the Christmas Rebellion, including 200 slaves who were killed during the Lima massacre in Adelphi, St James.

The celebration included the Flames of Freedom Torch Run on December 28, which saw 200 youth from the St James Southern constituency running from Catadupa through Cambridge and into Montpelier, then to Anchovy en route to Sam Sharpe Square, and finally on to Granville and John’s Hall. The event culminated with a re-enacted lighting of a thatch house in Tulloch Castle, symbolic of the signal that sparked the rebellion leading to the eventual abolition of slavery and the push for Emancipation that came on August 1, 1838.

In the meantime, Montego Bay Mayor Leeroy Williams proposed that more measures should be taken to honour Sam Sharpe’s memory, including speeding up an earlier proposed move to rename the Springfield Primary School in St James to the Sam Sharpe Primary School.

“Sam Sharpe is regarded as Jamaica’s foremost freedom fighter, and his efforts to win our freedom resulted in him paying the ultimate price. If we look at Sam Sharpe and the role he played in the abolition of slavery, I am sure you will agree that more needs to be done to honour him in this parish,” said Williams.

“Sam Sharpe Square was so named because this was where he was hanged, and Sam Sharpe Teachers’ College was also named after ‘Daddy’ Sharpe. However, there is a lot more that can be done to honour this great man on whose shoulders we stand today.”

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com