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June 2015 |
The Department of History hosted its inaugural History Fest under the theme “Honouring the Pioneers” from March 11-20, 2015. Several groups of lecturers, teaching assistants, and members of the History Society produced a historical panorama of the Department since its fledgling days in the Arcon Building in 1962. It began with a remembrance service for passed colleagues, Dr. Neville Hall, Mr. Keith Radhay, Dr. Kenneth Parmasad, Dr. Fitzroy Baptiste, Professor Keith Laurence, and Dr. Peter Harris. Invocations were done by Professor Anderson Maxwell and Deacon Cy Moore. It ended with a dinner and awards to long-serving and pioneering members of the Department. Photographic displays were mounted along corridors of the Humanities block, in the lobby of the Main library; and in the JFK Quadrangle a tent with a flat screen and printed displays was set up. The Department invited the Chiefs of the First Peoples to formerly launch the Library display. Among the exhibits was a collection of cultural artefacts that included the oldest manmade object in the Caribbean, a 9,000 year-old stone spear head found in Biche in 1988, and currently lodged in the Archaeology Centre of the Department. Chief Ricardo Bharath Hernandez and Christo Adonis of the Santa Rosa First Peoples invoked their deities and ancestors in a short ceremony next to the artefact. A symposium marking the centenary of Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was incorporated into History Fest, together with the Department’s faculty seminars that fell within the period. Altogether there were five robust academic sessions. The UNIA symposium featured visiting scholar, Dr. Erik McDuffie of the University of Illinois, who spoke on "The Diasporic Journeys of Louise Norton Langdon Little: Grassroots Garveyism, Women, and Global Black Freedom," Dr. Jerome Teelucksingh, who spoke on “Race Consciousness vs Class solidarity: The impact of Marcus Garvey on the Labour movement in Trinidad and Tobago,” and I spoke on “Garveyism and Africa: Reception, Rejection, Re-Union.” Dr. Michael Toussaint was the panel chair. Two symposia were capital to the theme, “Honouring the Pioneers,” each demonstrated emphatically the diverse roles of historians in general as well as the significant intervention of historians of the History Department in the political and social history of Trinidad and Tobago. The first of these symposia was titled “History and the Black Power Movement.” This fascinating panel relived and reinterpreted the enigmatic run up to declaration of the state of emergency in April 1970 and the social changes unleashed by the revolutionary uprising throughout the 1970s. The panel brought together lecturer-activist, Professor Brinsley Samaroo, and political detainee, Mr. Khafra Kambon, who admitted he had just graduated from the UWI, but still frequented the campus; Dr. Rita Pemberton who shared her experience of Black Power as a student at Mona under the tutelage of the famous revolutionary, Walter Rodney,and as participant in a public march against neo-colonialism; and one of the many young female revolutionaries who combined Black Power activism with female emancipationism, Dr.Olabisi Kuboni. Samaroo remembered his induction into Black Power when he, Bill Riviere and Patrick Emmanuel were “commandeered” by student activists to engage in a “conscientisation” of the masses through public meetings. If the commandeering was a shocker, the enthusiastic response by all three lecturers was even more so. Samaroo, for example, gave lectures from Rio Claro to Belmont and also participated in the “March to Caroni” under the banner, “African and Indians Unite Now”. Samaroo paid tribute to another student activist (and future lecturer in the Department), Ken Parmasad, for his diplomatic interventions that made the march a peaceful event. Kambon iterated that mass meetings and public marches in the 1960s were unfettered by legislation requiring Police permission; without this freedom, the March to Caroni might not have taken place, since, not only the Government, but also, Bhadase Sagan, the self-appointed “Maharaj” of Caroni was dead set against it. “Lecturers in Politics and Government” was the second capital symposium, featuring Brinsley Samaroo, Dr. Kusha Haraksingh, Dr. Lovell Francis and Professor Emerita Bridget Brereton. Other history lecturers had also been drawn into national politics, including Dr. Sahadeo Basdeo, Professor James Millette, the leader of the United National Independence Party (UNIP) and Professor Kelvin Singh, the UNIP’s Education Officer. Samaroo confirmed that his induction into politics began with his groundings in the Black Power movement. His political career included Leader of the Opposition in the Senate and Cabinet Minister in the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) Government. Although Haraksingh held the influential post of Vice-Chairman of the United Labour Front, he refused to offer himself as candidate for national elections; however, he also became a Senator and led his party’s negotiation in the formation of the NAR. Both Samaroo and Haraksingh affirmed that history shaped their politics, but equally, that their teaching of history was enhanced by their involvement in politics and Parliament. History Fest closed with a staff seminar paper by Dr. Michael Toussaint on the topic, “The Eric Williams Diaries.” Interestingly, Williams was very much part of the Department’s history: during the interviews of retired faculty, both Samaroo and Singh affirmed Williams’ tremendous influence on their intellectual development. Williams was also largely responsible for introducing the history of India and Africa to the department. Although Toussaint was more interested in interrogating the diaries as a window to the soul of Williams, it was inevitable that the Q&A session would open other vistas that linked Williams to Black Power and national politics to which many lecturers of the department were drawn. Dr Claudius Fergus lectures at the Department of History, The UWI St. Augustine Campus.
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