Descendants of European Slaveowners in Barbados to Apologize for Slavery [View All]

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Descendants of European Slaveowners March in Barbados to Apologize for Slavery

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (AP) - Bound and shackled, dozens of white descendants of European slaveowners slowly marched through Barbados' capital Wednesday in a symbolic gesture of apology for slavery.

Curious motorists slowed down and peered out their windows as some 50 white men and women wound through Bridgetown under a blazing sun, some with chains around their wrists and ankles and wooden yokes around their necks.

David Pott, a London native who led the group of foreigners and Barbadians, said the march was meant as a symbolic form penitence for the trans-Atlantic slave trade that shipped nearly 400,000 Africans to Barbados between the 17th and 19th centuries to toil on sugar plantations.

"For 200 years ... , British descendants committed unspeakable crimes against people of African descent," Pott said. "We are in a small way apologizing."