New documentary from Timestamp Media follows Harvard Professor Vincent Brown to Jamaica to explore the island’s reckoning with its history of slavery.
On the morning of April 8, 1760, in the parish of St. Mary, Jamaica, an enslaved African chief named Takyi led a bold and bloody revolt that shook the foundations of the British Empire. What began as a daring rebellion in Britain’s most lucrative colony soon grew into the largest slave uprising of the 18th-century British Atlantic world. Though brutally suppressed, Tacky's War—fueled by West African military strategies and anti-colonial resistance—ignited a chain reaction of uprisings across the Americas and helped lay the groundwork for Britain’s eventual abolition of slavery 70 years later.
For Professor Vincent Brown, Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, the story of Takyi is not just history—it is an urgent call to remember. After more than a decade of meticulous research across continents, Brown published Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War in 2020, a groundbreaking and award-winning book that reframes the rebellion not as a local disturbance but as part of a vast and interconnected struggle for Black liberation.
This 20-minute documentary, How Do You Remember the Days of Slavery, follows Professor Brown as he returns to Jamaica, invited by the Ministry of Culture to speak at the island’s second annual Chief Takyi Day. In St. Mary, he meets with local historians, politicians, and cultural advocates—including the irrepressible Derrick “Black X” Robinson, a grassroots activist who has made it his life’s mission to have Chief Takyi recognized as a Jamaican national hero.
Through acts of visceral protest—walking barefoot around the island and wearing a 30-pound chain to symbolize both bondage and resistance—Black X seeks to keep Takyi’s legacy alive in the hearts and minds of Jamaicans. “His activism is inspired and genuine,” says Barbara Makeda Blake-Hannah, O.S.E., O.D., Cultural Liaison for the Ministry of Culture.
At once a journey through time and a meditation on memory, How Do You Remember the Days of Slavery asks how a forgotten war might shape the future—and what it means to honor those who dared to fight for freedom.
For Professor Vincent Brown, Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, the story of Takyi is not just history—it is an urgent call to remember. After more than a decade of meticulous research across continents, Brown published Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War in 2020, a groundbreaking and award-winning book that reframes the rebellion not as a local disturbance but as part of a vast and interconnected struggle for Black liberation.
This 20-minute documentary, How Do You Remember the Days of Slavery, follows Professor Brown as he returns to Jamaica, invited by the Ministry of Culture to speak at the island’s second annual Chief Takyi Day. In St. Mary, he meets with local historians, politicians, and cultural advocates—including the irrepressible Derrick “Black X” Robinson, a grassroots activist who has made it his life’s mission to have Chief Takyi recognized as a Jamaican national hero.
Through acts of visceral protest—walking barefoot around the island and wearing a 30-pound chain to symbolize both bondage and resistance—Black X seeks to keep Takyi’s legacy alive in the hearts and minds of Jamaicans. “His activism is inspired and genuine,” says Barbara Makeda Blake-Hannah, O.S.E., O.D., Cultural Liaison for the Ministry of Culture.
At once a journey through time and a meditation on memory, How Do You Remember the Days of Slavery asks how a forgotten war might shape the future—and what it means to honor those who dared to fight for freedom.
