The Emancipation Support Committee of Trinidad and Tobago (ESC TT) has said it is pleased to host a young, brilliant Haitian-American scholar and university professor Dr Jemima Pierre to open its 2024 Kwame Ture Memorial Lecture Series.
Over the past months, the ESC said in a media release, news from Haiti, highlighting the continuing struggle for political and economic sovereignty and stability, has been grim. Haiti continues to be in a state of war.
The country is the world’s first African-ruled republic in the Western hemisphere and the first independent Caribbean state. To gain that independence, the ESCTT recalled, it had first to defeat the French militarily, and to maintain that freedom it had to battle continuously against other powerful armies of Europe at the time.
The European vendetta against Haiti has never ceased, it said, but too many people, "even in the Caribbean where we owe our freedom to Haiti," are neither aware of the debt the region owes to that country, nor understand the importance of Haiti.
The ESCTT said it was fitting that the launch of the 25th anniversary of the lecture series, in collaboration with the St Augustine campus of UWI, takes an in-depth look at Haiti through the eyes of Pierre, professor of global race at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada.
Considered this generation’s leading voice on Haiti, it said, Pierre will speak on Haiti and the Crisis of Imperialism in the Caribbean on June 9 at the Learning Resource Centre, at UWI, St Augustine. The programme is scheduled to begin at 4 pm.
The lecture series, championed by the ESCTT’s late director of education and research Tracy Wilson, aims to perpetuate Ture’s legacy by increasing knowledge and building the awareness, consciousness and intellect of African people and all peoples of Trinidad and Tobago, to enable better control of their destiny and social and economic well-being.This series of lectures involves five events where presentations, panel discussions and film presentations explore topics such as Palestine, culture, violence, caste, class and race.
“We continue to explore the struggle in Haiti, not only from a humanitarian perspective, but in order to expose the political and economic actions that have resulted in the present-day situation,” explained Dr Asha Kambon, ESCTT director.
“As we mark the 25th anniversary of the Kwame Ture Memorial Lecture Series, we thought it fitting to have an opening that focuses on the struggle of our brothers and sisters in Haiti. In that way, we continue the legacy of Brother Kwame Ture by expanding our understanding of the pan-African condition.”
Trained as a sociocultural anthropologist in the African Diaspora Programme at the University of Texas, Austin, Pierre belongs to UBC’s Institute of Race, Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice.
The release said her research and teaching engage with Africa and the African diaspora across the relationship of political economy to race, as articulated through capitalism, white supremacy and imperialism.
Pierre
