Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports Hon. Patricia Lourens Philip is inviting the general public to the Emancipation Eve Lecture at the University of St. Martin (USM) to be given by Professor Emeritus Alvin O. Thompson.
The theme of the lecture is, “The Role of Enslaved People in the Emancipation Process.” The lecture will be on Monday, June 30th and starts at 7.00pm to 10.00pm.
The Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports Affairs through the Department of Culture is hosting the event which is an extension to the theme of this years’ Emancipation Day Celebration “The Journey and Beyond”.
Esteemed guest lecturer, Professor Emeritus Alvin Oliver Thompson is from the Department of History and Philosophy at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Barbados.
Professor Thompson has published widely on Caribbean and African History and has received a number of awards for his scholarly work. Among these are the Prize of Caribbean Thought for his study entitled Flight to Freedom: African Runaways and Maroons in the Caribbean (2004) (a revised version of which was published (2005), the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence (2007), and the Lifetime Award for Excellence from the University of the West Indies Press (2007).
“Confronting Slavery Breaking the Corridors of Silence,” was written by Professor Thompson by UNESCO’s Slave Route Project, entitled Breaking the Silence.
The study deals with aspects of the experiences of Black peoples in Africa, Europe and the Americas that resulted from the transatlantic slave trade and slavery.
The study looks specifically at the ways in which Africans were acquired for work in the Americas, the Middle Passage or transit across the Atlantic Ocean, the conditions under which the labored in their new environments, the brutalities that they suffered at the cruel hands of their enslavers, the material and social cultural that they developed under the extreme conditions in which they lived, their struggles for freedom, and their attempts to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps after slavery was abolished as a legal institution.
The lecture of, “The Role of Enslaved People in the Emancipation Process” will highlight the many journeys and beyond of the enslaved Africans.