Kwame Ture Memorial lecture series launch on June 12

THE Emancipation Support Committee of Trinidad and Tobago launches the Kwame Ture Memorial Lecture Series on June 12. The event will be livestreamed on ESC’s Facebook and YouTube pages at 5 pm.

The lecture series, championed by the late director of education and research, Tracy Wilson, aims to perpetuate Ture’s legacy by increasing knowledge, building awareness, consciousness and intellect of African people and all peoples of TT, to enable better control of their destiny and social and economic well-being, said a media release.

Leading the charge is Dr Claudius Fergus, historian, former lecturer and head of the History Department of the University of the West Indies. Fergus will host the opening lecture, Kwame Ture in TT: Revisiting Black Power. The lecture will be presented by Amandla Thomas-Johnson, the author of Becoming Kwame Ture, which addresses Ture’s (Stokely Carmichael’s) time in Africa, the release said.

“Amandla is essentially a Pan Africanist, so it was a natural focus for him,” Fergus said in the release. “Growing up in Britain, his parentage was of the Windrush generation, so there was a natural connection to the Caribbean as well as identity to Caribbean heroes such as Ture, and anti-colonialism.”

Thomas-Johnson is a journalist of Trinbagonian parentage who has reported from Chile, TT and Switzerland. He was based in Dakar, Senegal for three years, covering West Africa, including The Gambia, Guinea, Mauritania and Mali for Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye and the Daily Telegraph. Additionally, he has contributed to The Guardian, BBC Radio 4, Jacobin, Vice and was a trainee on Chanel 4's investigative journalism programme. He is currently pursuing a PhD at Cornell University's Department of Literatures in English.

The lecture series will continue with a panel discussion on July 3, addressing The Legacy of Discrimination in Education – the situation of the African Child. Key speaker for that session will be Dee Ann Kentish-Roberts, Minister of Education and Social Development in Anguilla.

On July 10, there will be the presentation of the documentary film Decolonising Public Spaces: Documentary (Audit) on Picton, followed by a discussion with Gaynor Legall, co-ordinator of the Slave Trade and the British audit commissioned by the Welsh government.

Another film, this time on Haiti, will introduce the discussion on July 17: Raisin Lakay: Contemporary Issues Affecting Haiti’s Development. This will be followed by a discussion led by Jessica St Ville Ulysses, a first-generation Haitian-American dancer, educator, and choreographer.

Bringing the series to a close on July 24 will be Renee Cummings, artificial intelligence ethicist and data activist. Cummings will speak on Decolonising Data and Democratising Artificial Intelligence.

At the launch of the Pan African Festival last month, Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Arts, Randall Mitchell praised ESCTT for its continued determination to celebrate African heritage, the release said.

He commended the organisation for its work over the past 30 years “in making citizens more aware of the African traditions which have significantly influenced our culture, food, music and other features of the way of life as we know it in TT.”

For more info: 628-5008; e-mail: info.emancipation@esc-tt.org Facebook- Emancipation Support Committee - ESC