This drum group performs at a function in March honouring slave ancestors during activities to mark the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Transatlantic Trade in Africa 1807. - File

DR. VERENE SHEPHERD, chairman of the Jamaica National Bicentenary Committee (JNBC) and Professor of Social History at the University of the West Indies, will give the Distinguished Eric Williams Memorial Lecture at Florida International University (FIU) on Friday, October 5.

The lecture will take place at the Wertheim Performing Arts Center. Professor Shepherd will speak on the theme 'Emancipation, the African Atlantic, and the Long Road to Freedom'.

This year's lecture commemorates the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

The Eric Williams Memorial Lecture was inaugurated in 1999 by scholar and historian, Dr. John Hope Franklin. Its objectives are two-fold: to honour the memory of Eric Williams, noted historian, first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago and Caribbean statesman; and to provide an intellectual forum for the examination of pertinent issues in the history and politics of the African diaspora.

This year marks the ninth anniversary of the lecture, which is organised by the African New World Studies Programme at FIU in conjunction with the Eric Williams Memorial Collection (EWMC) at the University of the West Indies. It is one of the major events on the FIU calendar, and for the South Florida Caribbean community.

Atlantic history

Professor Shepherd was invited based on her expertise in the field of Atlantic history, as well as her leadership of the JNBC, which has guided bicentenary events here of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.

She will join noted historian, Professor Joseph Inikori of Rochester University, at the FIU lecture. Inikori's 2002 book, Africans and The Industrial Revolution, examines the impact of the slave-based Atlantic economy on the growth of markets for British manufacturers.

Throughout the year, the JNBC has staged several events to mark the landmark. These began with a cultural rally at Emancipation Park on January 2, with noted African writer Professor Chinua Achebe as keynote speaker.

A funeral rites ceremony was held at Kingston Harbour on March 25 to finally lay the 'spirits of our ancestors' to rest. The JNBC is now in the process of erecting monuments in memory of enslaved Africans.