Glenville Ash­by

I still re­mem­ber it dis­tinct­ly, as though it was yes­ter­day. Yes, 40 years have passed, but the re­ver­ber­a­tion of that mo­ment in our his­to­ry will con­tin­ue to have a last­ing im­pact. In­deed, not many sub­jects are as broad and com­plexed as Black Pow­er, but a UWI ef­fort to chron­i­cle the 1970 up­ris­ing in Trinidad, through a se­ries of pan­el dis­cus­sions, lec­tures, and artis­tic per­for­mances was an un­ques­tioned suc­cess. The forces that cre­at­ed this sem­i­nal time in Caribbean his­to­ry, and the im­pact of Black Pow­er was the the­mat­ic thrust of this two-day aca­d­e­m­ic con­fer­ence, dubbed Rel­e­vance and Con­ti­nu­ity, Caribbean and Glob­al Per­spec­tives. At the out­set, Dr Suni­ty Ma­haraj, di­rec­tor of the Lloyd Best In­sti­tute of the West In­dies, as­sert­ed that the goals of the move­ment had not been achieved.

At­tract­ed a va­ri­ety of in­ter­ests

"The is­sue of cul­ture iden­ti­ty, the vi­o­la­tion of our cul­ture and the il­le­git­i­ma­cy of cul­ture now re­main at the front burn­er be­cause of the cul­tur­al and in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment which now ex­ists," she stat­ed, as she ad­dressed the two-day aca­d­e­m­ic con­fer­ence. De­spite this seem­ing dis­mal so­cial di­ag­no­sis, the event at­tract­ed an amal­gam of in­ter­ests from var­i­ous gen­res–lit­er­a­ture, pol­i­tics, re­li­gion, and the arts–with si­mul­ta­ne­ous pan­els and con­tri­bu­tions from key ac­tivists and vi­sion­ar­ies, in­clud­ing Kafra Kam­bon and Earl Lovelace. Amer­i­can-born artist and ac­tivist, Rafi­ki Mor­ris, who now lives in Grande Riv­iere, praised the cross-gen­er­a­tional com­po­si­tion of at­ten­dees and pre­sen­ters, al­though he balked at call­ing the con­fer­ence, an "un­qual­i­fied suc­cess." "It was a pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ence," he not­ed, "with the young, mid­dle and the old­er folks par­tic­i­pat­ing, but there were too many per­son­al per­spec­tives ad­vanced that were di­vorced from the eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal ori­gins of the sub­ject mat­ter. Re­al­ly the whole ques­tion of own­er­ship of re­sources and em­pow­er­ment was not re­al­ly ex­plored."

Ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic

I shared a pan­el with Mor­ris, lec­tur­er Saman­tha Mitchell, and renowned play­wright and nov­el­ist Earl Lovelace, who was char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly thought-pro­vok­ing as he ques­tioned not our peo­ple's lack of cre­ativ­i­ty, but our ap­par­ent in­abil­i­ty to cap­i­talise on our in­ge­nu­ity. "We have cre­at­ed and in­vent­ed. We built the great­est crick­et team at one point, but tell me what have we done with these suc­cess­es?" he asked, chal­leng­ing those present to re­flect on our col­lec­tive po­ten­tial and how best to utilise it. My con­tri­bu­tion ex­tend­ed, if not con­firmed the per­va­sive feel­ing of this eclec­tic pan­el. "Black pow­er is not im­mutable but like an or­gan­ism, con­fig­ures and re­con­fig­ures, ac­cord­ing to con­di­tions and cir­cum­stances," I stressed. Ever a pro­po­nent of us­ing tra­di­tion­al val­ues and prac­tices to meet con­tem­po­rary chal­lenges, I stat­ed, "Whether in the area of fi­nance, health, per­son­al growth, and the ac­qui­si­tion of lead­er­ship skills, the tra­di­tions should be at the fore, pro­vid­ing the com­pass and the mech­a­nism for in­di­vid­ual and so­cial de­vel­op­ment."

A day lat­er I spoke to prin­ci­pal or­gan­is­er Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh, whose re­mark­able un­der­tak­ing was ac­knowl­edged by lo­cal and for­eign par­tic­i­pants. He was up­beat about the con­fer­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly the in­sight it gave to "those born af­ter 1970." His words were telling, "Ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic at large is a great feel­ing but I must ex­press dis­ap­point­ment in the lack of fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance from in­sti­tu­tions as TSTT and the banks. These in­sti­tu­tions are al­ways ea­ger to as­sist per­for­mances of for­eign artistes as Be­y­once. I hope that we will stage a sim­i­lar event every two or three years to ex­am­ine new as­pects of Black Pow­er." For any one fa­mil­iar with the his­to­ry of this move­ment in Trinidad, Dr Teelucks­ingh's ref­er­ence to banks may well evoke ghosts of a past, a past that was far from pleas­ant, for many.

Glenville Ash­by is a

New-York -based jour­nal­ist.

E-mail: glenvil­leash­by@gmail.com.