The Pan Africanists - Henry Sylvester Williams

HE was an incredible man who lived in incredibly difficult times.

When he was 17, he qualified as a primary school teacher. History recounts that he worked as a headmaster until the age of 22 and by the time he was 24, he was studying law at Dalhousie University in the US. In 1900, he organised the first Pan-African conference in London. He was elected to public office in England and worked extensively in South Africa, defending the rights of the poor. His name – Henry Sylvester Williams, from Arouca, Trinidad.

It would be easy to view the achievements of Henry Sylvester Williams in a casual manner. However, in order to fully understand how significant he was, it is necessary to locate him in the local and global context within which he operated. First, the brutish system of African enslavement had come to an end only about 30 years prior to his birth.

Although enslavement was abolished in the British Caribbean in 1834, the former enslaved were forced to work for an additional four years until 1838 under a system called Apprenticeship. Moreover, enslavement existed officially in Brazil until 1888, while the “last known slave ship landed its cargo in Cuba in 1867.”

So he may have had the good fortune to be born of middle-class parents, affording him opportunities to travel and study, but after Emancipation the conditions for people of African descent continued to decline. This dire situation no doubt motivated his heightened consciousness, reinforced by his experiences on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the US, racial inequality and segregation of races were legitimised in 1896 with the Supreme Court decision of “Plessy vs. Ferguson” which ruled that “the state of Louisiana had the right to require different railroad cars for blacks and whites.” This ruling led to a spate of repressive laws which became known as ‘Jim Crow’ legislation, eventually repealed almost 60 years later with the ‘Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954.

Thus, in 1893 when Williams began to study law at Dalhousie, it would be just three years before the American courts formalised racist practices that already existed.

Interestingly, 1896 was the same year that he migrated to England. After working for a year he was able to resume his law studies at Gray’s Inn, attaining his degree in 1900. But although Henry Sylvester Williams was able to achieve these personal goals, it does not mean that he was unaffected by the condition of African people.

For instance, he was deeply concerned by the negative effects of colonialism on African and Caribbean nations. One year after arriving in the United Kingdom (UK), he formed “the African Association to publicise injustices against African peoples everywhere and to promote their interests.”

It was not going to be easy for the African Association to achieve its goals. In England, Queen Victoria was on the throne and at some levels the Industrial Revolution was wreaking havoc. Renowned British novelist Charles Dickens documented the inequalities of that society in famous works ranging from Oliver Twist to Hard Times.

Women were intensifying their demands for the right to vote. Against this backdrop of ferment and change, he began to plan an international meeting of intellectuals. Its purpose? A Pan-African vision, one that called for African unity and improvement of the condition of African people everywhere.

Conference Chair Bishop Alexander Walters commented that “for the first time in history black people had gathered from all parts of the globe to discuss and improve the condition of their race, to assert their rights and organize so that they might take an equal place among nations.” To achieve this, they wanted among others, civil and political rights for Africans, the promotion of effective legislation, and facilitation of educational and commercial opportunities.

Influential advocates for African freedom and unity came from all over the world. They included representatives from the Caribbean, Africa and eminent African-American scholar and civil rights activist W.E. Dubois. At the end, representatives converted Henry Sylvester Williams’ African Association into a Pan African Association, thus popularising the term Pan African.

This first meeting, the Pan African Congress as it came to be called, inspired similar gatherings in Europe, USA and Africa over the decades. One was held in 2000 commemorating 100 years since that first momentous gathering. Thus, we in TT may be proud because the global Pan-African movement owes a considerable debt to the organisational capabilities, foresight and passion of the incredible, Henry Sylvester Williams.

Dara E. Healy is a performance artist, communications specialist and founder of the NGO, the Indigenous Creative Arts Network – ICAN.