Sam Sharpe Square

Sam Sharpe Square — formerly Charles Square, then The Parade — is the historic centre of Montego Bay. The bronze statue at one end shows Samuel Sharpe with his Bible, surrounded by four enslaved followers; this is the spot where he was executed in 1832 after leading the Christmas Rebellion. The small stone building beside it, The Cage, was originally a lockup for runaway slaves and disorderly sailors and is now a small museum.

The square remains the heart of the working town, surrounded by the Georgian-era Anglican church, the colonial-era post office, and the entrance to the bustling Harbour Street market. It is a sobering and important place — a brief stop here gives the visitor more sense of Jamaica's history than a week of beaches.

things to do sight
A story
Sam Sharpe was a literate, Baptist-educated enslaved deacon who organised a peaceful general strike on Christmas Day 1831, calling on slaves across western Jamaica to refuse work until they were paid. When planters reacted with violence, the strike turned into the Baptist War — an uprising of around 60,000 slaves that lasted ten days. It was crushed brutally; Sharpe was hanged in this square on 23 May 1832. But the scale of the rebellion and the punishment that followed shocked British opinion and helped tip the parliamentary debate that ended slavery in the Empire two years later.

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