municipal offices are located bears De Kom’s name, and a statue of De Kom towers over the square.
From left to right, Armand Baag, Zapata Jaw, Ronald Snijders, and Judith de Kom performing at Vereniging Ons Suriname in the 1970s, with a portrait of Anton de Kom on the wall © The Black Archives
In the Surinamese community, De Kom is a hero and part of our collective consciousness. But outside it, he is still sadly unknown to many people.
The Legacy of Slavery
Anton de Kom is also a hero to today’s activists. This became clear when a group of Surinamese, African, and Caribbean Dutch people spoke out in protest in Amsterdam’s Oosterpark on July 1, 2014 – the day of Keti Koti, the annual celebration of emancipation in Suriname. Before Lodewijk Asscher, then deputy prime minister and social affairs minister, was scheduled to speak, the protesters made the following statement:
We stand here today with the greatest possible respect and reverence for our ancestors. We stand here for Anton, Boni, Tula, Baron, Sophie, Joli Coeur, Tata, Karpata, Toussaint, Nanny, and the countless invisible fighters and victims of Dutch wealth and prosperity. We are here to make sure that no foreign breath will intrude on their commemoration. Minister Lodewijk Asscher represents the Dutch government, the same government that treats the Black community with disrespect, opposes a national day of commemoration, flouts UN conventions, and could not care less about the pain and the concerns of the Black community.
Furthermore, a beautiful statue of De Kom made by the artist Edwin de Vries was included in the Great Suriname Exhibition in De Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, which ran from late 2019 to early 2020. Around the same time, my mother’s copy of We Slaves of Suriname was on display in the exhibition “Afterlives of Slavery” in Amsterdam’s Tropenmuseum.
Although slavery in Suriname was abolished on paper 157 years ago, in 1863, its legacy is still seen and felt by many people in the form of everyday racism, institutional racism, and structural inequality in diverse segments of society. In education, Black children are confronted with discrimination by fellow students and by teachers, as well as with a lopsided curriculum in which the sinister sides of the colonial past are usually hushed up.3 Numerous studies have shown that job applicants with a migrant background are less likely to find work than white applicants, because of their skin color, name, or cultural background.
Recent years have seen a growing movement opposing institutional racism in the Netherlands. An all-time low was reached in November 2019, when a conference organized by the activist group Kick Out Zwarte Piet, which opposes the blackface character Zwarte Piet involved in celebrations of Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas’s Eve) in the Dutch-speaking world, was violently disrupted by radicalized pro-Zwarte Piet protesters. This shows that, in a different era and in a different way, it remains essential for us to continue Anton de Kom’s struggle.
De Kom understood that education is an essential means of achieving justice and equality:
No better way to foster a sense of inferiority in a race than through this form of historical education, in which the sons of a different people are the only ones mentioned or praised. It took a long time before I could free myself entirely from the obsessive belief that a Negro is always and unreservedly inferior to any white. (p. 84)
Today, in 2020, we might turn this message around. I believe that most Surinamese people have already thrown off the colonial sense of inferiority to white people. Yet there are still white people who, perhaps unconsciously, harbor a sense of superiority. It expresses itself in part in the ferocity and aggressiveness with which they defend the Sinterklaas tradition, which symbolizes the colonial power structures De Kom opposed. But we also see it in the institutional racism that still affects many Black people and people of color. Anton de Kom’s struggle is unfortunately not over yet, but his work and his ideas continue to inspire new generations. I myself find new insights in We Slaves of Suriname with every read, and it reminds me that the work I do with my colleagues at The Black Archives and in the anti-racism movement builds on the work of giants such as Anton de Kom.
Notes
1 1 From the mini-documentary Vereniging Ons Suriname: 100 jaar emancipatie & strijd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHJVOcBVzw0. [ME]
2 2 A. de Kom, zijn strijd en ideeën. Edited by the Anton de Kom–Abraham Behr Institute. Sranan Buku, Amsterdam 1989. [ME]
Foreword Judith de Kom
TRUTH raises itself against the storm that scatters its seeds broadcast.
Rabindranath Tagore
“No people can reach full maturity as long as it remains burdened with an inherited sense of inferiority. That is why this book endeavors to rouse the self-respect of the Surinamese people.” These are the words of Anton de Kom in the section “The History of Our Nation” (p. 85).
He foresaw that the Surinamese people, weighed down by the legacy of colonialism, would have to walk a long, hard road to develop into a full-fledged nation.
We Slaves of Suriname is partly a political commentary on the history of Suriname and partly a cry for justice. Most importantly, perhaps, it was written by a child of Suriname whose dissenting opinions brought the force of colonial oppression down upon him.
Anton de Kom was born in Paramaribo in 1898.
“He was a quiet child. As a boy, he was always lost in a book,” family members say.
His father was a gold-digger. After the gold industry went into decline, he took up farming. There were six children in the family, three boys and three girls. Anton was the eldest son. He went to the Paulusschool in Paramaribo, going on after primary school to “advanced elementary education,” an unusual step for a child from his background in 1910.
Letters of reference indicate that he then became an office worker. His employers included H.C. Cooke, a process server and debt collector; he also spent three years at the Balata Compagnieën Suriname en Guyana.
This last position brought him in touch with the balata bleeders (harvesters of natural rubber). It became his first struggle against exploitation. A worker who knew him said, “He sat in his office and fought for us. He made sure we received the wages to which we were entitled.”
In June 1920, De Kom left for the Netherlands, where he volunteered for the 2nd Cavalry Regiment. After serving for one year, he left the military and found work as an assistant accountant. In January 1926, De Kom married Petronella C. Borsboom. They would have three boys and one girl.
In the 1920s, as one of the few people of color in the Netherlands, he came into contact with the Indonesian nationalist students, such as Mohammed Hatta, who would later play such an important role in the political awakening and liberation of Indonesia. It was partly thanks to them that De Kom’s political consciousness was raised. Another contributing factor was Black activism in the Americas,
