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When slavery was abolished. the thousand slaves that we owned here in grenada got nothing. do you think that my family should pay money in reparations to the people of grenada? can you raise your hand if you think that's a good idea? that seems to be unanimous, nicole. can i ask how many of you are descended from slaves? do you know? i think everybody. nicole laughs after class, i sat down with the students to find out more about their views on reparations and the legacy of slavery on grenada. it's not onlyjust in the infrastructure or the systems, but it's also in the mind of everyone, just g...

The slaves, basically, there would have been specific laws. all right? and one of the things we must understand is that they were chattel slaves. and that means... what does chattel slavery mean? student: personal property. perfect — personal property. all right? now, if they're considered personal property, it means that they have no rights. absolutely no rights. so this is laura trevelyan. now, one of the things about laura is that she found not too long ago that her... five times great—grandfather. ..five times great—grandfather was a slave owner... here... ..in grenada. so this is my...

So a one—year—old? a one—year—old. yeah. this is the beausejour estate, high in the hills of grenada, once a sugar cane plantation jointly owned by the trevelyans. the production of sugar cane fuelled the transatlantic slave trade. and it's here that slaves, owned by my family, worked long hours harvesting the crop. this is the location where the slave master would come out and look over the slave plantation, the sugar plantation. at beausejour, i met the second of my guides, the historical novelist dc campbell, who grew up on grenada. dc explained what life was like for the slaves shi...

And what that means. i've come here to confront the past, to ask how it shapes the future. i felt apprehensive as we began exploring grenada, not knowing what i'd discover, or how my quest to unearth the past would be received. one of the things that the british government asked for was for the planters to say how many slaves they owned and to make a record of how many were born, how many died each year. so grenada actually has some of the best records. nicole phillip—dowe is my guide. she's a historian, an official at the university of the west indies, and vice chair of grenada's national r...

And from our first conversation, within minutes, i realised this is something that we can talk about without the emotional... ..heart—wrenching conversations that you typically will have, that we've reached that point where the descendants of slaves and the descendants of slave owners can actually sit side by side and come up with solutions. i've been thinking a lot during this trip about what, if anything, i might owe to the people of grenada — an issue i discussed with nicole phillip—dowe. i've been thinking about my own responsibility, nicole. i'm thinking that i can persuade family m...