The Eric Williams Memorial Collection 

_______________________________________________________________________ 

P.O. Box 561631, Miami, Fl 33256-1631, USATel: 305-271-7246Cell: 305-905-9999Fax: 305-271-4160 

24th Eric Williams Memorial Lecture  

Marlon James “Imagining Alternative Futures” 

MIAMI, FL. (March 3, 2026) - The 24th Eric E. Williams Memorial Lecture will take place at 7:15 p.m. (EST) on Thursday, April 2, 2026 at the Boyd Vance Theatre, George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center, Austin, Texas.  The event, with a reception before at 6:15 p.m. is free and open to the public. 

Live-streaming will be available, and post-Lecture viewing accessible on the University of Texas at Austin’s Warfield Center YouTube channel. 

After a record 19 consecutive years at Florida International University (FIU), in 2021 the Lecture found a new home at the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. An online exhibition of portions of the Eric Williams Memorial Collection Museum at The University of the West Indies (UWI, Trinidad and Tobago) is also available for viewing at https://exhibits.lib.utexas.edu/spotlight/celebrating-eric-williams 

As the celebrated author of five novels, Marlon James was born in Jamaica in 1970.  His first novel, John Crow’s Devil, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. His New York Times bestseller Black Leopard, Red Wolf, was a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction in 2019, and his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings won the 2015 Man Booker Prize.  James is also the author of The Book of Night Women, which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Minnesota Book Award.  

Media Contact: 

Erica Williams Connell 

305-905-9999 

ewmc@ewmc.tt.org 

“Marlon James is a writer of exceptional talent and range,” says Warfield Center Director and literary scholar Dr. Jennifer Wilks. “As Eric Williams was a scholar whose deep knowledge of history informed his vision for an independent Trinidad and Tobago, so James is an artist who deftly moves between immersive historical fiction and captivating epic fantasy, delving into the nuances of the past to imagine the possibilities of the future.” 

Established in 1999 at FIU, the Eric Williams Memorial Lecture honors the legendary Caribbean statesman, eminent historian, and author of several books.  His 1944 groundbreaking study Capitalism and Slavery arguably re-framed the historiography of the British Transatlantic Slave Trade and established the contribution of Caribbean slavery to the development of both Britain and America.  It has been translated into 11 languages: Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Turkish, Korean among them (with German and Dutch the most recent). An 82-year-old still highly controversial and provocative text, popularly referred to as The Williams Thesis, the book argues among other propositions, that slave trade revenue fueled the rise of the British Industrial Revolution; and that its declining profitability, not solely humanitarianism, gave the impetus to British abolition. Never out of print in the US, when a mass market edition was produced in March 2022 Capitalism and Slavery was listed at #5 on the UK Sunday Times Bestseller list.  

Eric Williams was also the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and Head of Government for a quarter of a century until his death in 1981. He led the country to Independence from Britain in 1962 and to Republican status in 1976.  

Among prior Eric Williams Memorial Lecture speakers have been:  the late John Hope Franklin, one of America’s premier historians of the African-American experience; Kenneth Kaunda, former President of the Republic of Zambia; Cynthia Pratt, former Deputy Prime Minister of the Bahamas; Mia Mottley, now Prime Minister of Barbados; Beverly Anderson-Manley, former First Lady of Jamaica; former Prime Ministers of Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and The Grenadines; prize-winning Haitian author Edwige Danticat; award-winning author, historian and educator, Dr. Carol Anderson of White Rage fame; CNN anchor Abby Phillip, and renowned activist Dr. Angela Davis in both 2003 and 2023.  The Lecture, which seeks to provide an intellectual forum for the examination of pertinent issues in Caribbean and African Diaspora history and politics, is co-sponsored in part by: UT’s Michener Center for Writers, New Writers Project, The Caribbean Studies Initiative of The Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS); the City of Austin; the Texas Book Festival; Mr. & Mrs. Leroy Lashley; and Jerry Nagee. 

The Lecture is also supported by The Eric Williams Memorial Collection Research Library, Archives & Museum at The University of the West Indies, which was inaugurated by former US Secretary of State, Colin L. Powell in 1998.  It was named to UNESCO’s prestigious Memory of the World Register in 1999. 

Books by and about Eric Williams will be available for purchase at the Lecture.   

- EWMC -