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27 YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH, ERIC WILLIAMS
MEMORIAL COLLECTION CELEBRATES 10TH ANNIVERSARY
Eric Williams,
PORT
OF SPAIN, TRINIDAD (March 20, 2008) – March 22, 2008 will usher in the tenth
anniversary of the inauguration of the Eric Williams Memorial Collection (EWMC),
by former US Secretary of State, Colin L. Powell, at The University of the West
Indies in Trinidad and Tobago. Dr. Williams, the country’s first Prime
Minister who died in office on March 29, 1981, was heralded by Mr. Powell as a
tireless warrior in the battle against colonialism, among his many other
achievements as a scholar, politician and international statesman.
More recently in 2007,
Williams was honoured with the posthumous conferral of
The Collection consists of Williams’
Research Library, Archives and Museum.
In
1999, it was named to UNESCO’s prestigious
Memory of the World Register.
At the time, the documentary heritage of only 47 other countries had been so
designated.
Available for consultation by researchers, the
Collection amply reflects its owner’s eclectic interests, comprising some 7,000
volumes, as well as correspondence, speeches, manuscripts, historical writings,
research notes, conference documents and a miscellany of reports.
A Museum - containing a wealth of emotive
memorabilia of the period; copies of the seven translations of Williams’ seminal
work, Capitalism and Slavery (Russian, Chinese and Japanese among them) -
a Korean translation will appear in 2008; as well as photographs depicting
various aspects of his life and contribution to the development of Trinidad and
Tobago - completes this extraordinarily rich archive, as does a
three-dimensional re-creation of Dr. Williams’ study.
Dr. Tony
Martin,
During the last decade, the Eric
Williams Memorial Collection has initiated a biennial Essay Competition
encompassing 155 schools in 17 Caribbean countries, co-sponsored by the Jamaica
National Bicentenary Committee; organized an annual Lectureship at Florida
International University (now in its tenth consecutive year), in addition to
collaborating with the Mayor of London in his 2007 Slave Trade Bicentenary
Lecture Series, dedicated to Williams; partnered with the University of
Sheffield (UK) in an annual one-day seminar for 60 Caribbean Masters and
Doctoral students – the first such undertaking at The University of the West
Indies; made inroads into Miami-Dade’s (US) student population of some 414,128
with the inclusion of
Eric Williams in the County’s State-mandated African
American curriculum; sponsored four international conferences on Williams - as
well as numerous conference panels - with many of their proceedings published;
lectured to interested groups and students about Williams and the Collection;
received multiple awards and recognition for its
efforts; introduced an Oral History Project which includes well over 150
calypsos either sung about Williams or mentioning his name – calypso in the
Caribbean being the art of social commentary; facilitated Encyclopedia entries
on Williams; and actively promoted the republication of Williams’ books – many
of them translations long out of print. Several international book launches have
been arranged by the EWMC, and the
All of these efforts have been amply
promoted in the local, regional and international media – from
Thus, with all
of its other endeavours, the EWMC is a model for the
Guests of the
Alana Laura Lalman,
Regika Barker,
student,
· “Empowering, Riveting, Powerful!”
Joshua Kirven,
Frantz
Fanon
“Each generation must, out of relative
obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it…”