Bermuda’s ties to the UK port of Liverpool will be highlighted during a series of lectures next month to mark the transatlantic slave trade.

The Africa Diaspora Heritage Trail Bermuda Foundation has organised the events to commemorate the United Nations International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

The International Day of Remembrance was adopted by a UN Resolution in 2007 and is observed on 25 March of each year to honour and remember the over 15 million men, women and children who were the victims of the transatlantic slave trade. The International Day, first observed in 2008, also aims at raising awareness about the dangers of racism and prejudice today.

The events kick off with a commemorative service at Cobb’s Hill Methodist Church on Sunday, March 23. The first of three lectures will be given on Tuesday, March 25 at the St. Paul Centennial Hall, and will focus on city of Liverpool and its connection with the slave trade as the jump off point for the Triangular Slave Trade.

Entitled ‘Liverpool — The Trade and The Traders’ will be delivered by Dr. Mark Christian, who is from Liverpool but is now Professor and Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies at Lehman College, City University of New York.

On Wednesday, March 25, Bermuda-based physician, Dr. Femi Bada will speak on ‘Africa — Capture and Enslavement’, and the following evening Bermudian Dr. Clarence Maxwell, assistant professor of Caribbean and Latin American History at Millersville University in Lancaster, Pennsylvania

will focus on ‘The Americas — The Middle Passage and Beyond’. All lectures will start at 6.30pm.

And with Liverpool — a famous footballing city — a theme of the series, soccer legend Clyde Best will give a talk at the Bermuda College on Friday, March 27. The week of commemoration will culminate in a soccer match on Saturday, March 28 when a Clyde Best XI will take on a team captained by sporting great Cyrille Regis, one of the first black players to be capped by England.

ADHT board of directors chairman Maxine Esdaille said: “The ADHT shares the UN vision in commemorating this event and sees it as an opportunity to also remind our community of the positive impact that persons of African descent have had on Bermuda in particular and the world in general.

“Our mission for the 2014 commemorative is to continue to position the ADHT as an organisation that shares with the Diaspora events that highlight the importance of the presence peoples from the Diaspora in countries around the world.”