By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe September 11, 2023 Two weeks ago I was invited to be a panel member of a conference, “The March on Washington: Its Legacy and Impact in the Americas”, that was organised by the US Permanent Mission to the Organisation of American States (OAS) in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of … Continue reading Coming black on board
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe April 24, 2023 PART II Philip Henry Douglin, grandfather of Bishop Rawle Douglin, took up his clerical duties at the St Clement’s Parish, St Madeleine, in 1887. Coming out of a slave past, having done missionary work in Africa and having been associated with some of the distinguished scholar missionaries … Continue reading The esteemed ancestry of Bishop Rawle Douglin
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe Submitted: December 25, 2022 Posted: December 27, 2022 Today is Christmas Day. Let us give thanks and praise to the birth of a wonderfully well-researched book, Via the Round About, written by Beverly Scobie. It traces one part of Scobie’s family, beginning with Joseph Arthur, the patriarch, who was “enslaved … Continue reading Landscape, family and memory
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe November 07, 2022 PART VI On June 27 I received the following e-mail from Margaret Heath, a relative of William Hardin Burnley (WHB). It read: “I thought you might be interested to know that my brother, as executor of my mother’s estate, has just informed me he has consigned a … Continue reading Out of the cane fields of Tacarigua
By Raffique Shah August 15, 2022 It pains me whenever I feel it necessary to confront the race issue in my column. I see it as a waste of valuable column centimetres where those of us who have been selected by the managers and editors of newspapers to highlight and comment on matters of national … Continue reading Finding African farmers
By Stephen Kangal June 14, 2022 Indians were recruited by ” arkatias” and transported to work on the cane-fields of Caroni in Trinidad because after a period of keen observation and analysis by the occupying British and based on their experience in sugar cultivation in India (UP and Bihar) and taking into account the extreme … Continue reading The Indentures Did Not Affect the Wages of the “Apprentices”
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe June 06, 2022 On the celebration of Indian Arrival Day, May 31, an Express editorial recounted: “On this day 177 years ago the Fatel Razack entered the Gulf of Paria with over 200 Indians aboard, the first of 143,939 citizens of India to be brought here under a British scheme … Continue reading Origin of Indian indentureship in Trinidad
We can’t beat our way out of it By Jensen La Vende April 21, 2022 – newsday.co.tt CORPORAL PUNISHMENT will not be the solution for school violence the Prime Minister said on Thursday as he responded to number of videos of school children fighting. Speaking with the media at the Piarco International Airport on Thursday, … Continue reading Prime Minister on school violence
Express Editorial November 15, 2021 – trinidadexpress.com Given the Prime Minister’s statement that he had no intention of seeking an extension of the state of emergency when it came to a natural end at month-end, we, too, are taken aback by his decision to end the SoE on Wednesday, 12 days ahead if its scheduled … Continue reading Odd SoE decision
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe August 09, 2021 PART II “Pas de six ans, Point de six ans!” (“No to Six Years. No more six years!”) —The chant of the ex-slaves on Emancipation Day More apprentices came to Government House on Saturday, August 2, to assert their freedom. There was “a visible increase of insolence … Continue reading GLORIOUS DAYS OF THE HAPPY AND THE FREE