Photo: Tingey Injury Law Firm | Unsplash
Members of the Trevelyan family have set up a £100,000 ($119,479) fund meant to investigate the lingering economic impacts of slavery in the eastern Caribbean, as well as establish the Reparations Research Fund at the University of the West Indies. The Trevelyans were among the British slave-owning families who received compensation when slavery was abolished in parts of the British Empire in the 19th century. But 200 years later, the family are seeking to make amends to the community whose forced labor it profited from. For John Dower, a descendant of the Trevelyan family, his family's past came as a shock. He was conducting genealogical research when he discovered his family's co-ownership of 1,004 slaves throughout six plantations in Grenada, a former British colony. "I had no idea. It became apparent that no one living in the family knew about it. It had been expunged from the family history," Dower told the Guardian. "I was more than shocked, I was badly shaken. I was under the impression that I came from a benevolent, public service-facing family."
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