Slavery is an abhorrent violation of human rights, yet it has been practised for thousands of years and even illegally still in today’s supposedly progressive and equal society.
Now a descendant of slaves demands reparations for her people’s suffering from none other than Academy Award-nominated actor Benedict Cumberbatch.
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@kuhdeejuh_ ♬ Conspiracy - Briand, Philippe & Saban, Gabriel
Among others, the enslavement of African people from the continent, then herded, whipped and branded like cattle and put into ships that were bound for the US and the Caribbean, is a well-documented and shameful history.
What awaited them on these strange new lands were gruelling days of back-breaking unpaid labour, mass violence, sexual exploitation and even death.
Cumberbatch’s ancestors are said to be among the numerous Europeans who benefited and amassed wealth from these atrocities.
It was Cumberbatch’s seventh-great-grandfather, Abraham Cumberbatch, who bought estates in Barbados, then a British colony in the 1700s, and developed them into a sugar plantation. He is said to have owned 300 slaves.
TikTok user @kuhdeejuh who has Caribbean roots, claims to have traced her ancestry all the way back to the plantation.
‘’I have waited for 10 years almost damn near for this moment right here,’’ she said.
In the video, she shows a photograph of her paternal grandmother, whose maiden name was Cumberbatch. She then went onto a website that preserves important family records and found other relatives with the last name Cumberbatch.
Going further up her family tree, she found one of her ancestors who was born in 1800, presumably on the Cleland plantation, three decades before the abolition of slavery.
‘’I knew the very first time I saw Benedict Cumberbatch’s name. I made that connection right then because I had never seen a white Cumberbatch until then. Every other Cumberbatch I knew was from my family or other Bajans in Barbados.’’
Another TikTok user, @formerlovepoet sleuthed further and claims to have discovered which particular Cumberbatch enslaved the woman’s family.
Other claims by other slave descendants have been made previously - according to Wildlandfirenews.com.
Cumberbatch's family connection to slavery was revived in 2014, when Stacey Cumberbatch, a New York City commissioner and the granddaughter of Caribbean immigrants, revealed that she was related to the Sherlock actor through the slave trade.
She told the New York Times that her ancestors were slaves on a Barbados plantation and took the surname Cumberbatch - their enslavers.
After the abolition of slavery in 1833 the British government paid reparations to slave owners, which were finally paid off in 2015. Cumberbatch’s family ancestors received in what would be around $1.2 million in today’s money.
However, slave descendants have not been paid any reparations.
According to David Comissiong, a Barbados politician, activist and member of the reparations commission said it was ‘easier for the task force to focus on legal entities such as governments or companies, rather than a family’ in an op-ed in “Barbados Today”.
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@formerlovepoet Replying to @formerlovepoet @kuhdeejuh_ I think Abraham Parry Cumberbatch is who youre looking for #bristerenglishproject #bristerep #formerlovepoet #blacktiktok #benadictbumberbatch #slavery #barbados #fyp #k18results #historian #Caribbean ♬ Flare - Hensonn
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