Voter Suppression Theme for 20th Annual Eric Williams Memorial Lecture

[MIAMI] — The 20th Annual Eric E. Williams Memorial Lecture will take place at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 14, 2022 at the AT&T Conference Center, University of Texas, Austin (UT). Admission is free and open to the public.

For those unable to attend, live-streaming is available.  Post-Lecture viewing will be accessible on the UT Warfield Center’s YouTube channel.

After a record 19 consecutive years at Florida International University (FIU), the Lecture has a new home. The John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. Last year, the Series was launched via four pre-recorded video conversations with its Founder, as well as prior speakers. In addition to an online exhibition of the Eric Williams Memorial Collection Museum at the University of the West Indies (UWI, Trinidad and Tobago). Both are provided on the website previously listed.

2022 Lecture Host

This year, the Lecture hosts award-winning author, historian and educator, Dr. Carol Anderson,
Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University. Anderson’s reputation as a fiery and passionate speaker complements her writing in her book of a similar name.

According to the New York Times, “…it seems to have been written from a state of emergency, in an adrenaline-fueled sprint. Anderson is a stinging polemicist; her book rolls through a condensed history of voting rights and disenfranchisement…[and] will push you to think not just about the vote count but about who counts, too.”

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Miami University, Anderson earned bachelor’s and master’s
degrees in Political Science (International Relations) and a bachelor’s in history. She received her
Ph.D. in history from Ohio State University.

Professor Anderson’s role as a public scholar has included participation in working groups. Especially dealing with race, equality, minority rights, and criminal justice at Stanford University’s Center for Applied Science and Behavioral Studies, the Aspen Institute, the United Nations, and as a member of the US State Department’s Historical Advisory Committee. In 2018, she was named a Guggenheim Fellow for Constitutional Studies. She is currently on the Advisory Board of the National Economic and
Social Rights Initiative.

She has appeared on MSNBC, PBS, and Democracy Now!, and has offered commentary in the
Huffington Post, UK Guardian, and the New York Times. Her op-ed in the Washington Post on the
Ferguson, Missouri, race riots was the most shared for the newspaper in 2014.

Eric Williams Memorial Lecture Series

Established in 1999 at FIU, the Eric Williams Memorial Lecture honors the distinguished Caribbean
statesman. An internationally-renowned historian, and author of several books. His 1944 groundbreaking study Capitalism and Slavery, popularly referred to as The Williams Thesis. The study has  arguably re-framed the historiography of the British trans-Atlantic slave trade. In addition, established the contribution of Caribbean slavery to the development of both Britain and America.

The book has been translated into nine languages, including Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish and Korean. A tenth, Dutch, is forthcoming. It continues to inform today’s ongoing debate and, in March 2022, was recorded as #5 on the UK Sunday Times Bestseller list.

Former Prime Minister

Eric E. Williams was also the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and Head of Government for a quarter of a century until his death in 1981. He led the country to Independence from Britain in 1962 and onto Republicanism in 1976.

Prior Lecture Speakers

Among prior Eric Williams Memorial Lecture speakers have been: the late John Hope Franklin, one
of America’s premier historians of the African-American experience; Kenneth Kaunda, former President of the Republic of Zambia; Cynthia Pratt, former Deputy Prime Minister of the Bahamas; Mia Mottley, now Prime Minister of Barbados; Beverly Anderson-Manley, former First Lady of Jamaica; Portia Simpson Miller, former Prime Minister of Jamaica; Hon. Kenny Anthony, former Prime Minister of Saint Lucia; Hon. Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and The Grenadines; the celebrated civil rights activist Angela Davis and prize-winning Haitian author Edwige Danticat.

The Lecture, which seeks to provide an intellectual forum for the examination of pertinent issues in
Caribbean and African Diaspora history and politics, is co-sponsored in part by UT’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy; Glenn Joseph; Dr. & Mrs. Leroy Lashley; Jerry Nagee.

The Lecture is also supported by The Eric Williams Memorial Collection Research Library, Archives
& Museum at UWI, which was inaugurated by former US Secretary of State, Colin L. Powell in 1998. It
was named to UNESCO’s prestigious Memory of the World Register in 1999.

Books by Eric Williams and Carol Anderson will be available for purchase at the Lecture.