The Rt Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin, the Bishop of Dover and a Governor of Canterbury Christ Church University, shares a message of support during Black History Month and for our University approach to celebrate and appreciate the Black Community throughout the year with our Black History 365 programme.

I was lucky to have been born and brought up in Jamaica. At school, English history was taught along with Caribbean history. It was from the latter that I learnt about the ‘Transatlantic Slave Trade’ - ‘The Middle Passage.’ Growing up, I saw the remnants of the sugar plantations in the West of the Island where once the enslaved worked and where my grandmother lived; in school I also learnt about our National Heroes who were enslaved and treated less than human –Nanny of the Maroons and Samuel Sharpe, Paul Bogle and George William Gordon.

As a woman of Caribbean heritage – I am aware that I am a descendant of enslaved people. I have read their stories and made myself watch several movies and documentaries depicting their lives. Entertainment it was not, for me, these were moments of deep reflection.

I encourage engagement with ‘Black History Month’ because it is about reimagining the kind of world we want to live in and what kind of legacy we want to leave behind for our children’s and grandchildren’s generations to come.