Next on the Pan African Festival calendar hosted by the Emancipation Support Committee of Trinidad and Tobago is the Kwame Ture Memorial Lecture Series (KTMLS). The online launch of the series is scheduled for June 27 at 5pm. The launch, as well as the series, will take place via the ESCTT’s Facebook and YouTube pages.
The series presents a platform for conversations around ESCTT’s 2021 theme: Advancing Pan-African Solidarity Towards a Balanced World.
To achieve the objectives of the theme we seek to deepen the education African heritage and its place in our society. We foster and embrace opportunities for closer Afro-Caribbean connections, as well as connections with the wider African diaspora and the African continent, connections that are geared towards advancing our collective development as a global people.
The Lecture Series is named after Kwame Ture, whose lifelong desire was the edification and empowerment of all African people. Kwame Ture, whose original name was Stokely Carmichael, was a prominent Trinidad-born civil rights activist and one of the leaders of African American Civil Rights struggle in the 1960s. He became internationally known for the promotion of the rallying cry, “Black Power.”
Delivering the feature address at the KTMLS launch will be Dr Rupert Lewis, Professor Emeritus of Political Thought in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. The topic for his lecture, geared for the time in which we live will be: “100 Years: Journey from the Garvey Movement to Black Lives Matter.”
Dr Lewis is a political scientist who has published extensively on Marcus Garvey’s activities in Jamaica and the Caribbean region. He has also authored research about the Caribbean activist-intellectual, Walter Rodney. Professor Lewis has served as member of the Council of the Institute of Jamaica and as Chairman of the African-Caribbean Institute of Jamaica and Jamaica Memory Bank.
Following the launch, the series will continue on July 11, 18, and 25. The topics will include: The Role of Music in advancing Pan African solidarity; African Film in advancing the African Renaissance; Re-imaging Diaspora – Continental Integration in a Post Covid-19 World.
“Pan-Africanism is one of the ideological and action-inspiring responses to this state of the world, which emerged over the last 500 years, and it is in the DNA of our nation. In a biological sense, it is in the bloodstream of persons who are classified as African or African descendants. But it is more than that. It is in the DNA of our political inheritance as a country,” said Khafra Kambon, ESCTT’s Director of Regional and Pan African Affairs.
“In 2021 we feel the need to emphasize how important it is for us to embrace our Pan-African heritage to collectively rise out of economic marginalization, academic decline, and negative class perceptions which are further dis-empowering, antagonizing and alienating our brothers and sisters who are crushed at the lowest socio-economic levels.”
COMMENTS