The 2022 Eric Williams Memorial Lecture—“One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy”—features keynote speaker Dr. Carol Anderson (Professor of African American Studies at Emory University). The lecture will take place on Thursday April 14, 2022, at the AT&T Hotel and Conference Center (1900 University Avenue, Austin, Texas) from 5:00 to 7:30pm. This event is free and open to the public. Reception to follow. Face masks are strongly encouraged. The keynote speech will also be live-streamed online. Please click HERE to register in advance. 

In April 2021, the Eric Williams Memorial Lecture (EWML) moved from Florida International University to its new home at the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Founded in 1999, the series honors the late Dr. Eric Williams (1911-1981), scholar, statesman, and Head of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago from 1956 until his death in 1981. Williams authored Capitalism and Slavery (1944), the landmark study that has been translated into 9 languages: Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Turkish, Korean, Spanish, among them (with a Dutch translation forthcoming). It continues to inform the ongoing debate about slavery and abolition. [ Now available for purchase from The University of North Carolina Press: uncpress.org.]

The program schedule: 

4:30pm – 5:00pm CDT: Attendee Check-in

5:00pm – 5:30pm CDT: Program Welcome & Opening Remarks

5:30pm – 6:30pm CDT: Keynote Speech by Dr. Carol Anderson

6:30pm – 7:30pm CDT: Reception/Book Sales & Signing

The digital exhibition, Celebrating Eric Williams, coordinated by the Eric Williams Memorial Collection Research Library, Archives & Museum, and UT’s Black Diaspora Archive and mounted by Black Diaspora Archivist Rachel Winston can be viewed HERE. Exhibition materials are available in English and Spanish. 

If you have any questions, please email Christina Bryant (Warfield Center Senior Program Coordinator) at clbryant@austin.utexas.edu.

Sponsored by: The John L. Warfield Center for African & African American Studies, Eric Williams Memorial Collection, and UT Center for the Study of Race and Democracy (CSRD)

For more information, see https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/caaas/events/2022-eric-williams-memorial-lecture

[Above: Dr. Anderson photographed for the cover of Emory Nursing Magazine. Stephen Nowland/Emory University.]