*Society 👥 / Barbados 🇧🇧* *May 14, 1625 – A Date to Commemorate, Not Celebrate* In a bold *36-page essay*, *David Comissiong*, ambassador and Pan-African activist, challenges the colonial narrative of *May 14, 1625*, the date of Britain’s first landing in Barbados. He reframes it not as a *discovery*, but as the beginning of a system rooted in *dispossession, racial violence, and slavery*. Barbados became *the testing ground for Britain’s slave society*, birthplace of sugar plantations, racial codes, and colonial law exported across the empire. But it is also a land of *heroic resistance*, led by figures like *Bussa*, and many others. Comissiong urges Barbadians to *commemorate with clarity*, and to make the 400th anniversary in 2025 a call to action: *reparations, African-Caribbean unity, and collective memory.* *The past cannot be erased — but it can fuel our transformation.* _@Karayib News – 14/05/2025_ _Credit: David Comissiong / Clement Payne Centre / ourhistory.org.uk_