Barbados
Judy Cumberbatch, known as Queen of the Crop, in her garden in Barbados on Feb. 14, 2023. As a worker on various sugar cane plantations, Judy Cumberbatch broke national harvest records and was the âQueen of the Harvestâ for years.
Judy Cumberbatch grew up with her grandparents on the Cleland Plantation. As a girl, she helped her grandparents with the sugar cane. Her mother went to Great Britain as a guest worker when she was five. And she stayed back on the plantation.
The end of slavery did not automatically mean the end of slave labor. Some of the freed people continued to work in the same fields for generations, for starvation wages. They had nothing, no land, no money, no education and no political power. And so many continued to work into the pockets of the big landowners, as if the chains were still there.