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And promoting awareness of that historic yet overlooked event, Assad Shoman’s Citizens for the Defense of Sovereignty group donated digital and hard copies of a number of original documents on a key event in Belize’s history: The People’s Uprising that took place in Belize Town on July 22nd 1919. Shoman’s group donated them to the Belize National Library Service. In a press release it states that “The copies of original documents collected from the British National Archives include hundreds of pages of evidence taken by the Commission of Enquiry appointed by the Governor to inquire into the origin of the riot, the Report of the Commissioners, British official correspondence on the riot, correspondence on the conditions in the colony in 1918 and 1919, and other papers that throw light on the causes and consequences of the Uprising.â€￾ 

And for a bit more background the release goes on to say “The Uprising was quashed just a few days before the 81st anniversary of Emancipation, when, in 1838, the persons enslaved by the British were legally declared free, but which the people of Belize were not allowed to commemorate. The 1919 Uprising occurred precisely because Emancipation did not fulfill its promise, as some of the laws which prevented the former slaves from owning land and kept them tied to the mahogany camps continued in existence until the middle of the twentieth century.â€￾

The documents are now available for viewing.