Matt Johnston’s grandfather came to this country from Jamaica as part of the Windrush generation. The island home he left behind was once a key destination for enslaved Africans transported across the Atlantic.
Being a bit of a collector over the years, and with that island’s dark history as one of the most important slave societies in the British Empire in mind, he collected many documents associated with those times.
They passed eventually to Matt and on to his fourteen-year-old daughter, Sunday, and it was she who suggested that something positive should be done with them all, enabling them to be used in teaching history and a better understanding of that period.
Father, daughter and mother Verity established from their Corsham home – a UK-based foundation called TREE. It stands for the Trust for Records of Enslavement and Emancipation and is dedicated to preserving, interpreting and sharing historical records of enslavement and emancipation.
The family were on a mission to share these records and have already done so in schools and by creating educational packs.
Matt is due to give a talk at Beckford’s Tower on Thursday, April 2nd, from 6 pm to 8 pm, which will include a Q & A session and an opportunity to view selected historical artefacts.
The TREE session is part of the historic tower’s After Hours events, and will draw on estate inventories, appraisals, and eighteenth and nineteenth-century Caribbean newspapers that recorded the administration of slavery and its aftermath.
Tickets cost £10 and are available from https://beckfordstower.org.uk/whats-on/
He came around to see me today, and we talked about how he passionately believed in the educational value of what he does.
Slavery was abolished via the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, and then twenty million pounds were paid in reparations to slave owners. That’s equivalent to 15 to 20 billion pounds in today’s money.
