Eric Williams - Shift To Public Life

Shift To Public Life

In 1944 he was appointed to the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission. In 1948 Williams returned to Trinidad as the Commission's Deputy Chairman of the Caribbean Research Council. In Trinidad, Williams delivered a series of educational lectures for which he became famous. In 1955 after disagreements between Williams and the Commission, the Commission elected not to renew his contract. In a famous speech at Woodford Square in Port of Spain, he declared that he had decided to "put down his bucket" in the land of his birth. He rechristened that enclosed park, which stood in front of the Trinidad courts and legislature, "The University of Woodford Square", and proceeded to give a series of public lectures on world history, Greek democracy and philosophy, the history of slavery, and the history of the Caribbean to large audiences drawn from every social class.

Read more about this topic:  Eric Williams

Famous quotes containing the words shift, public and/or life:

    They shift coffee-houses and chocolate-houses from hour to hour, to get over the insupportable labour of doing nothing.
    Richard Steele (1672–1729)

    [T]he Congregational minister in a neighboring town definitely stated that ‘the same spirit which drove the herd of swine into the sea drove the Baptists into the water, and that they were hurried along by the devil until the rite was performed.’
    —For the State of Vermont, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)