Late prime minister Williams' work lives on 40 years after his death

March 22 marked the 23rd anniversary of the establishment of the Eric Williams Memorial Collection (EWMC) Research Library, Archives and Museum at the University of the West Indies (UWI).

The inauguration was hosted in 1998 by former US secretary of state Colin Powell who said of late prime minister Dr Eric Williams, “No one was a greater fighter for justice and equality. No one was a greater leader.” Williams died on March 29, 1981.

A release from his daughter, and director of the collection, Erica Williams-Connell, said the collection was named in 1999 to Unesco's Memory of the World Register.

It consists of Williams’ research library, archives and museum and is the English-speaking Caribbean’s first attempt at establishing an entity akin to a US presidential library.

"It is a model for cultural heritage institutions across the Caribbean, including the TT Central Bank, the College of the Bahamas, and the H Lavity Stoutt Community College in the British Virgin Islands."

The EWMC is considered largely responsible for a resurgence of interest in Williams’ intellectual and political contributions.

Prof Ivelaw Griffith, former dean of Florida International University’s (FIU) Honors College, said: “Those who laboured in the organisational, financial and other vineyards to create the collection have provided a unique intellectual gift, not just to Trinidad and Tobago…The EWMC adheres to the assertion that Eric Williams’s legacy cannot be contained within four walls or behind glass, it must be lived.”

The library facilitates and organises international conferences, symposia and lectures. After 19 consecutive years at FIU, the Eric Williams Memorial Lecture has moved to the University of Texas, Austin.

This year the series will begin with an online exhibition of the EWMC museum, and interviews with prior speakers. When it is safe, the lecture will revert to its format of in-house attendance.

The library established an annual Caribbean Examination Council CAPE prize in history; and since 2007, a regional essay competition in 17 Caribbean countries for 178 schools.

The first winner, Dr Dexnell Peters of Trinidad and Tobago, is now the Bennett Boskey Fellow in Atlantic studies at Oxford University.

The library introduced an oral history project comprising hundreds of interviews and calypsoes about Eric Williams. It has been the subject of academic papers, lectures and books and has received multiple awards and recognition for its efforts.

The collection’s scholarly foundation centres on Williams’s scholarship such as his book Capitalism and Slavery which was first published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1944. The book has never been out of print. It has been translated into nine foreign languages including Turkish, Korean, Chinese, Russian and Japanese. It is now being translated into Dutch for the first time. It will be released in audio format on Audible on April 1.

Before the pandemic, guests of the EWMC museum included Venkaiah Naidu – Vice President of India and Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines.

The collection, organisers believe, continues to demonstrate to the younger generation the importance of history.