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The Jamaican Diaspora in the Northeastern region of the United States has announced multiple events to celebrate Jamaica’s 61st anniversary of independence. These events have been organized under the auspices of the Embassy of Jamaica, the Consulate of New York, honorary consuls, and Diaspora organizations. Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United States, Audrey Marks, was enthusiastic about the celebrations and emphasized Jamaica’s spirit of resilience, which is captured in its slogan, “We likkle but we tallawah.” Although the nation’s history comprises only 61 years, the anniversary highlights Jamaica’s endurance as a country and its impact on the world. Marks added that the Embassy and its partners were looking forward to facilitating the events and that she hopes all Jamaicans in the Diaspora will continue the tradition of sharing Jamaica’s spirit by embracing the 2023 anniversary theme of “Jamaica Proud and Strong.”

Northeastern USA Jamaican Diaspora Calendar of 61st Anniversary Events

July 28

New York – Anniversary Ball

The series of events marking the anniversary began on Friday, July 28, 2023, with an anniversary ball hosted by the Rochester New York Jamaica Organization.

New Jersey – Flag Raising Ceremony

In New Jersey, the Jamaica Organization of New Jersey will raise the flag at the East Orange City Hall on July 28, with the participation of Mayor Ted Green

July 30

Maryland – Service of Thanksgiving

On Sunday, July 30, the Embassy of Jamaica will host a Service of Thanksgiving at the Sligo Seventh Day Adventist Church in Takoma Park, Maryland at 11 am. A welcoming address will be given by Her Excellency Audrey Marks, Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United States, who will also deliver a message from Jamaica’s Prime Minister. Several dignitaries will attend the service, including Maryland Governor Wes Moore, whose parents are from Jamaica; diplomats; other elected officials; and representatives of international organizations. The sermon will be given by Reverend Astor Carlyle from Webster Memorial United Church, and Dr. Bertram L. Melbourne, Dean of the Howard University School of Divinity, will be the moderator.

August 4

Philadelphia – Flag Raising Ceremony

Jamaicans in Philadelphia will participate in a flag-raising ceremony to celebrate “Jamaica 61” on Thursday, August 4, at City Hall, at 10:30 am. The ceremony will be led by Jamaica’s Honorary Consul in Philadelphia, Christopher Chaplin.

August 6

New York – Independence Day Service

Independence Day, Sunday, August 6, will be marked by a church service at the New Life Tabernacle in Brooklyn. Bishop Michael Mitchell, Senior Pastor of New Life, will deliver the sermon. The welcome address will be made by Alison Wilson, Jamaica’s Consul General in New York.

August 12

Atlanta – Independence Ball and Scholarship Awards

In Atlanta, Georgia, Independence activities will begin with the Atlanta Jamaica Association hosting its annual Independence Ball and Scholarship Awards at the Atlanta Airport Marriott Gateway Hotel. Ambassador Audrey Marks will be a special guest, while Dr. Clare Nelson, President of the Institute of Caribbean Studies in Maryland, will be the guest speaker.

August 13

Philadelphia – “Jamaica 61” Church Service

The “Jamaican Diaspora Pastors” of the Great State of Pennsylvania will hold a “Jamaica 61” church service at the First African Baptist Church at 6700 Lansdowne Avenue in Philadelphia, beginning at 4 pm.

New Jersey – Thanksgiving Service

On the 13th of August, the New Hope Baptist Church of New Jersey will have a thanksgiving service to celebrate its 25th anniversary as an organization and Jamaica’s 61st year of independence. The service will be held at the New Hope Baptist Church of New Jersey commencing at 4:00 pm. The guest speaker will be Dr. Dwayne Frazer, the pastor of the Montclair Seventh Day Adventist Church.

Atlanta – Annual Fundraising Brunch

The Benevolent Missions of Atlanta will have its annual fundraising brunch at the Mayfair Tower in Atlanta. Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United States, Audrey Marks, will deliver the keynote address. The

August 19

New York – Grand Independence Gala

A grand Independence Gala will be staged on August 19 at the New York Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan. The event will honor seven outstanding Jamaicans, including award-winning actor Sheryl -Lee-Ralph and Grammy Award-winning recording artist, Orville “Shaggy” Burrell.

Maryland – “Jamaica 61 Gala”

The Jamaica Association of Maryland will host the “Jamaica 61 Gala” beginning at 8 pm under the auspices of Her Excellency Ambassador Audrey Marks at Martin’s West Ballroom. Ambassador Marks will give the official welcome and share the Jamaican Prime Minister’s message.

August 20

Atlanta – Ecumenical Thanksgiving Church Service

On August 20, at 3 pm, there will be an ecumenical Thanksgiving church service at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church, featuring Reverend. Dr. Denzil Holness as preacher and Reverend Dr. Noel Erskine as moderator.

Aug 26

New Jersey – 25th Anniversary and Independence Awards Gala

The Jamaica Organization of New Jersey will stage the 25th Anniversary and Independence Awards Gala at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Newark. Her Excellency Audrey Marks will be the guest speaker. The organization will also honor US Congresswoman Yvette Clarke and Comedian Oliver Samuels.

September 17

Maryland – “Jamaica Fest”

The celebrations will end on September 17, when the Jamaican Embassy will stage “Jamaica Fest,” a Cultural Showcase designed to Bring Jamaica to the Northeast USA, at Veterans Plaza in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland. The event begins at 12 noon and will highlight Jamaica’s unique culture and music and provide illustrations of the 61st anniversary theme of “Jamaica Proud and Strong.”

Photo – Deposit Photos

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When many people around the world hear the term bandana, they automatically think of the modern kerchief. The term bandana is somewhat misleading. Bandhani cloth originated in Madras in Eastern India. The city was renamed as Chennai in 1996. The fabric has a special place in Jamaica’s history, is simply known as bandana, and has since become a symbol of the island’s culture.

Bandana cloth originated in India as squares of silk or cotton fabric that were large enough to be worn as a shawl. The design was one in which spots or shapes were created on a background that was primarily red or blue, though other colors and patterns were also in evidence. The word bandhani in Urdu and Sanskrit is loosely translated as ‘tied.’

Examples of bandhani fabric date back to 4000 B.C. The cloth was originally made of silk. It was in the 1940s that the plaid pattern and color of the material, along with other symbols, became associated with the heritage and traditions of the ordinary Jamaican people.

The cloth has a long association with Jamaica. After India fell to the British in the 19th century, the British used cotton to make bandana cloth with a plaid pattern. It was lightweight and cool, highly durable, and a source of cheap material to make clothing for the enslaved and Black working-class women in the Caribbean.

However, Jamaicans have reclaimed the fabric from its slave connotations and it’s now a symbol of pride and distinction. It’s particularly popular among market vendors, singers and storytellers. Bandana cloth is in high evidence during ceremonial, cultural and independence holidays in Jamaica.

A dress, or skirt and blouse ensemble, of bandana cloth is known as the Jamaican National Costume. The bespoke outfit is accompanied by a head covering tied to form peaks in the back of the head. The peaks were of special significance, as they were used to declare a woman’s marital status.

Photo: Xavier Murphy

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Jubilee… Jubilee… Is Emancipation Day …August 1^st is the Anniversary of the Emancipation Day in 1838 for the former enslaved African peoples in the Brutish I mean British Empire. A Freudian slip. This year is ever special being declared the UN International Year for Peoples of African Descent.  It is ten years since the UN World Conference Against Racism, where Jamaica and Barbados campaigned to have the transatlantic Slave trade in Africans declared a crime against humanity.  Alas! It was not to be.  Then, like now, whereas this issue has been at the forefront of the minds of the Black intelligentsia across Latin America – from Argentina to Brazil and Colombia and Honduras, where millions of peoples of African descent have been silenced by a status quo that renders them invisible– in the Caribbean, the issue of how our ‘Africanity’  has defined and pre-scribed our reality seems to be off the table.  The lack of attention paid to the UN year in the Caribbean is bewildering, or maybe not. Perhaps I should not be surprised, given our seemingly insatiable appetite for all things Euro-American… starting from the over-reliance on weaves and blonded tresses, to light colored contact lenses, through to the truly ungodly practice of skin-bleaching.  Perhaps, we in the Caribbean also believe we are in a post racial society.  Afterall, America now has a Black president, so whatever woes and worries we face have little or naught to do with race.   Maybe in 21^st century Jamaica, we have arrived at a place where concerns about the nature of our being as a largely African-descendant post-slavery society, and the impact of that trauma on our collective psyche is no longer necessary.  Jamaica as myth conjures muscle and magic – giving life to the adage –‘we lickle but we tallawah’.  On Emancipation Day 2011, 163 years after our ancestors danced in the plantations singing ‘ Jubilee, Jubilee.. Queen Victoria set we free’  it would seem that emancipation still coming.  Mental chains still bind us in a dance of the macabre… one step forward, three steps backward.  Why else would we – the country that gave the world Marcus Garvey and the theology of an African Christ by way of Rastafari — still be lacking in the self-confidence that Garvey preached about with such passion?

Silencing Africans in the Caribbean

Aunty Girlie say that she remember the days long before Black became beautiful, when Black people could not get front office jobs in the banks and hotel front desks, unless you could pass the brown paper bag test.  Emancipation Day fed our aspirations for political independence.  The memory of our maroon heritage fuelled our call to action.   The Jamaican diaspora in New York had bold visions and aspirations which gave birth in the 1930s to the Jamaica Progressive League, which carried the mantle of independence movement.  When we gained independence in the sixties, emancipation and slavery seemed to lose its relevance to ourselves as nations. Aunty Girlie say that Jamaica of the sixties was riding the wave of the civil rights movement in the US, where the children and grandchildren of the Jamaicans and other West Indians who had nurtured Africanity in the Harlem renaissance were riding the freedom rides from North to South and fighting for the emancipation of our hearts and minds from mental slavery.  Emancipation came in the form of popular fashion.  Afros and naturals were the rage of youth rebellion, black became beautiful and our Africanity was personalized in the clothes we wore – dashikis and turbans. 

The Impact of Slavery on the Caribbean Psyche

Cousin Boysie say that emancipation is not as simple as a decree for the fact that we free from slavery in terms of physical chains.  And neither is independence.  Yes we now have our own flag and heroes and national emblems, but people think that freedom is free.  They don’t seem to understand that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.  They don’t understand that is we in charge of weself.  We still looking to the Queen.  He say that most people don’t understand what slavery did to the Black man conscience and consciousness — not just in the Americas, but in Africa.  That is why he think that Emancipation Day should be about education not events.  Because it seems as if the only freedom we seem to be enjoying in Jamaica is the freedom to be every and anything including acting as fools and savages.  Is one of the few times that Aunty Girlie and Cousin Boysie agree on anything.

Emancipation and Independence: Beyond Physical Chains

Aunty, we know that Jamaica at 49 is more than the sum of the violent crimes and other brutish tales we see discussed around the global fireside, otherwise known as the internet.  We know that there is the Jamaica of Marcus Garvey and Monty Alexander and Merlyn Ottey.  We Jamaicans who form part of the 2.5 million or so they say cyber Jamaicans who live outside the rock, know that on the rock there are at least 2.5 million hard working mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts who are farmers and teachers and nurses and bus drivers and higglers and engineers and doctors and lawyers.  And we know the classrooms are filled with talent and hope, hundreds of thousands of future stars that are rightful heirs to the kingdom that was born on August 1^st, 1838 — the kingdom born from the sacrifices of Brother Sam Sharpe and hundreds of other saints, who fought and died in the three hundred year scrabble for our freedom.  What we don’t know is how to deal with the tens – Yes the TENS-  that are terrorizing the thousands.  Our emancipation is at risk not only from the seeming triumph of self-hate but from the tyranny of greed and avarice being nurtured in the gardens of the narco-traffickers.  As the old song goes “Sammy plant piece of corn down a gully, and it bear till it kill poor Sammy”.   We must root out the bad corn.

Jamaica’s Legacy and the Challenges Ahead

In three days, on August 6th we begin the 366 day journey of anniversary of our fifty-fourth year of independence.  In the meantime, there is still hope that sometime before the end of this UN International Year of People of African Descent, Jamaica will have a conversation on the lingering legacy of the trauma of slavery that keeps us from seeing the vision our foremothers and fathers had, for who we were to become.  The attention to the healing of these collective wounds should be the primary reason for the commemoration of Emancipation Day.  Development can only happen when we are confident of our identity, and thus secure in our empowerment.  Our Jubilee in 1838 was not the prerogative of Queen Victoria then, nor will it be the prerogative of Barack Obama, Ju Hintao nor the IMF. Jubilee – our full freedom will come when we embrace all of who we are including our Africanity.  We must embrace our painful slave past if we are to create our desired future.  In the meantime… ‘emancipation still coming’…

Walk Good, Cousin Claira.

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