32 Facts About Eric Williams

Eric Eustace Williams was a Trinidad and Tobago politician.

Eric Williams has been described as the "Father of the Nation", having led the then-British Colony of Trinidad and Tobago to majority rule on 28 October 1956, to independence on 31 August 1962, and republic status on 1 August 1976, leading an unbroken string of general elections victories with his political party, the People's National Movement, until his death in 1981.

Eric Williams was the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and a Caribbean historian, most noted for his book entitled Capitalism and Slavery.

Eric Williams's father Thomas Henry Williams was a minor civil servant and devout Roman Catholic, and his mother Eliza Frances Boissiere was a descendant of the mixed French Creole Mulatto elite and had African and French ancestry.

Eric Williams was a descendant of the notable de Boissiere family in Trinidad.

Eric Williams saw his first school years at Tranquillity Boys' Intermediate Government School and he was later educated at Queen's Royal College in Port of Spain, where he excelled at academics and football.

Eric Williams won an island scholarship in 1932, which allowed him to attend St Catherine's Society, Oxford.

Eric Williams's thesis was both a direct attack on the idea that moral and humanitarian motives were the key facts in the success of the British abolitionist movement, and a covert critique of the established British historiography on the West Indies as supportive of continued British colonial rule.

In support of the Eric Williams thesis, David Ryden presented evidence to show that by the early nineteenth century there was an emerging crisis of profitability.

In 1939, Eric Williams joined the Political Science department at Howard University.

In 1944, Williams was appointed to the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission.

Eric Williams 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.

From that public platform on 15 January 1956, Eric Williams inaugurated his own political party, the People's National Movement, which would take Trinidad and Tobago into independence in 1962, and dominate its post-colonial politics.

Eric Williams was thus elected Chief Minister and was able to get all seven of his ministers elected.

Eric Williams made three additional speeches in which he sought to identify himself with the aims of the Black Power movement.

Eric Williams reshuffled his cabinet and removed three ministers and three senators.

Attorney General Karl Hudson-Phillips offered to resign over the failure of the Bill, but Eric Williams refused his resignation.

Eric Williams was 69 years old at the time of his death.

Eric Williams had married Elsie Ribeiro, a music studies student born to a mother from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and a Portuguese Trinidadian father, on 30 January 1937, while he was a postgraduate student at Oxford University.

Eric Williams had known Ribeiro from Trinidad before he left for the United Kingdom and she was the sister of his roommate in England.

However, Eric Williams questioned the paternity of Elsie Pamela, thus leading to problems in the marriage.

In May 1948, Eric Williams left Washington, DC to go back to Trinidad, abandoning his wife and children.

Eric Williams worked at the Caribbean Commission where Williams had taken up a position.

However, Ribeiro obtained an injunction preventing Eric Williams from making any attempt at divorce, on the grounds that he had earlier subjected himself to the jurisdiction of the District of Columbia court.

Eric Williams filed formal proceedings for a divorce on 24 November 1950.

On 13 December 1950, Eric Williams was ordered to appear in court, most likely because he had filed for a divorce in Reno, even though he had earlier submitted himself to the jurisdiction of the District of Columbia.

Eric Williams eventually met the six-week residential requirement to obtain a Nevada divorce and on 2 January 1951, he married Moyou in Reno, in a ceremony performed by The Rev Munroe Warner of First Christian Church.

The marriage was exposed 18 months later when Mook Sang sent a copy of their marriage certificate to the Chronicle newspaper following rumors of Eric Williams having an affair with a local beauty queen.

Eric Williams argued that by extension, so was the emancipation of the slaves and the blockade of Africa, and that as industrial capitalism and wage labour began to expand, eliminating the competition from wage-free slavery became economically advantageous.

Eric Williams was particularly scathing in his criticism of the work of Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle.

Eric Williams sent one of 73 Apollo 11 Goodwill Messages to NASA for the historic first lunar landing in 1969.

In 2011, to mark the centenary of Williams' birth, Mariel Brown directed the documentary film Inward Hunger: the Story of Eric Williams, scripted by Alake Pilgrim.