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UWI TODAY
– SUNDAY 7TH 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, andDr. 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
HISTORY FEST 2015
Honouring the Pioneers
B y D r . C l a u d i u s F e r g u s
Members of the Symposium on History and the Black Power Movement
Members of the Panel, Lecturers in Politics and Government
Dr Claudius Fergus
lectures at the Department of History, The UWI St. Augustine Campus.
the Labour movement in Trinidad and Tobago,” and I
spoke on “GarveyismandAfrica: 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 inApril 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 fromRio
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 EricWilliams
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.
