Slavery Remembrance Day 2025

Posted on: 13 August 2025 in Posts

On Saturday 23rd August 2025, Liverpool will mark Slavery Remembrance Day (SRD) 2025. See below events running across the week by CSIS and National Museums Liverpool.

SRD is observed to honour the millions of people who were enslaved and to acknowledge the lasting impact of the transatlantic slave trade. This day marks a period of reflection on one of humanity’s darkest chapters, when entire societies were built on the forced labour, suffering, and dehumanisation of others. It is not only about remembering the victims, but also about recognising the resilience of enslaved people and their descendants, whose cultures, traditions, and contributions have profoundly shaped the modern world.

In a contemporary context, SRD serves as a vital reminder that the legacy of slavery continues to influence global inequalities, systemic racism, and cultural erasure. By commemorating this history, we confront uncomfortable truths and challenge ourselves to build a more just and inclusive future. This day calls us to educate, reflect, and act — ensuring that the atrocities of the past are neither forgotten nor repeated, and that the fight for freedom and human dignity remains ongoing.

SRD Events:

Spheres of Oppression: Crime, Health and the Media
18th August 2025 (5pm) 
Online

Join the first webinar as part of a new CSIS online seminar series, Legacies of Enslavement: Transatlantic Dialogues on History and Justice. 

Spheres of Oppression: Crime, Health and the Media: A critical exploration of how attitudes towards race in the wake of the Transatlantic slave trade have both influenced, and been influenced by, an array of different institutions in both the USA and UK.

Dorothy Kuya Memorial Lecture – Guilaine Kinouani
22^nd August 2025 (5:30pm)
Liverpool Town Hall

For the 26th Slavery Remembrance Day, ISM welcomes award-winning writer, psychologist, group analyst, and thinker Guilaine Kinouani to Liverpool to deliver the Dorothy Kuya Slavery Remembrance Memorial Lecture.

With a background in critical psychology and Black studies, Guilaine explores the impact of racism and whiteness on the mind and body. Her books 'Living While Black' (2021) and 'White Minds' (2023) examine racial trauma and the everyday dynamics of whiteness.

Walk of Remembrance
23^rd August 2025 (12pm)
Starting from Williamson Square

National Museums Liverpool will mark SRD 2025 on Saturday 23rd August, with a Walk of Remembrance through Liverpool City Centre, taking pauses at landmarks of historic significance. Along the walk, they’ll speak about the journey and hear from influential voices.

The walk will comprise key sites around the city, pausing for moments of reflection, performance and historic insight, before culminating with a masquerade and libation, performed at the historic waterfront. 

Searching For My Slave Roots by Malik Al Nasir book event
23^rd August 2025 (5:30pm)
Walker Art Gallery

An informal foyer reception hosted by Malik, will introduce guests to the 'Colonial Legacies of Liverpool's Sandbach Family' exhibit on the ground floor, followed by a book talk. The talk explores the main themes of his fascinating new book 'Searching for my Slave Roots', following the twists and turns of his journey into the past, to uncover how the Sandbach's enslaved his ancestors in Demerara.

A major subject of the book is the nuanced ways that trauma plays down through generations of the enslaved, and how wealth and privilege plays across generations of slaveholders and their descendants.