The holiday weekend in Frederiksted began Thursday afternoon with a host of speakers looking to the past to learn lessons for the present and future at the annual commemoration of emancipation.
Shelly Moorehead spoke about reparations and Richard Schrader read poems about that day 166 years ago known as Emancipation Day as part of the celebrations.
Keynote speaker Gerard Emanuel read from Mario Moorehead’s book, “He and She,” and then gave the history of emancipation. Though ill and not in attendance, Moorehead was honored Thursday for speaking at the event for 40 years.
Many speakers at United Caribbean Association community center were focused on what lessons can be drawn from the history of that day.
Renholdt “Rookie” Jackson got very passionate at times. He compared the education system to the planter who didn’t give a damn and said people are still enslaved having to work three jobs. 
Elder Asta Williams, a great grandma in her 70s, went on and on about parents raising their children in a home with Christian values and taking them to church. She said education begins at home with the parents.
Schrader’s rendering of three poems about looking at the day, July 3, 1848 – when Crucians gathered by the thousands at Fort Frederik to demand an end to their oppressive status and demanded their freedom by 4 p.m. and threatening to burn the town and the plantations if the demand was not meet – might have been the most passionate.
In his poem, “Home Sweet Home,” Schrader called the day “the happiest day in Frederiksted, July 3, 1848.”
In another poem he demanded to know the fate of Moses “Buddhoe” Gottlieb, the black liberator who masterminded and planned the rebellion that day, and for whom the near Buddhoe Park was named, where the Rising Stars Steel Pan was playing.
In an impassioned voice, Schrader demanded, “Please tell me, Please tell me, What have you done with my hero?”
Denise Lenhardt from Inter Faith Coalition performed a libation at UCA, saying this act of reverence honored ancestors and was a symbolic gesture to remember them. She read the Ancestral Healing Prayer before an altar where offerings of fruit and vegetables were placed along with white candles.
Nzingha Ankh said it was a beautiful day to celebrate freedom but, referring to the speakers’ messages, added, “This shows us that we still have a long way to go.”
Meridith Nielsen, director of the office of Highway Safety, said he the population in Frederiksted appreciates the event. “But we can’t dwell in the past,” he added. We have to move ahead.”
On July 3, 1848, enslaved Africans marched to Frederiksted and Gov. Peter von Scholten declared they were free.
The freedom fighters that marched to Frederiksted outnumbered the gendarmes. And the gendarmes’ gunpowder stored in Fort Frederik was missing. There wasn’t any choice but to give the slaves their freedom.
“From this day forward all unfree in the Danish West Indies shall be free,” von Scholten declared.
Thursday’s event was dedicated to local musician Jamesie Brewster, who passed away last week.
