Claudius Fergus

Claudius Fergus is a retired Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at UWI’s St Augustine Campus who specialises in the abolition of British colonial slavery and its transatlantic slave trade. His major work on the subject is Revolutionary Emancipation: Slavery and Abolitionism in the British West Indies (2013). He has other extensive publications in peer-reviewed journals and edited books.

Emancipating old narratives of ‘emancipation’ and examining colonials’ ‘deceitful bait-and-switch’

In defiance of the rapid community spread of Covid-19, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, kept the promise he made on Emancipation Day 2019 to unveil T&T’s first emancipation monument—the only live public event on Emancipation Day 2020. Like many thousands of other Trinbagonians, I missed the commemorative spectacles of the …

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Claude’s comments: The case for renaming the Churchill Roosevelt Hwy—a monument to two white supremacists

Artists and engineers more than any other professionals inscribe the signature of their civilisation. The newly built Curepe interchange is yet another demonstration of confidence and competence of our engineers and associated professionals and workers in transforming the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway (CRH) from an antique highway to a modern freeway. I …

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Claude’s comments: Only Africans forced to deny heritage to be ‘appropriately groomed’; that must stop!

The following is the final instalment in Dr Claudius Fergus’ three part series on African textured hair: a historical, cultural and legislative perspective: Unlike what obtains in many Caribbean Commonwealth states, Trinidad and Tobago’s Education Act does not define responsibilities of students or speak to the obligations of principals toward …

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Culturecide, subversion and African hair: Dr Fergus on ‘Dada’ hair and ‘Bantu’ knots

The scale of natural justice weighs negatively against the Ministry of Education for allowing 2019 to end without unambiguously prohibiting discrimination against natural African hair texture and basic African hairstyles, and mandating school administrators to root out the practice whenever it rears its ugly head. Ultimately, it might necessitate amending …

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Judging Columbus through history (Pt 4): Genocide and white supremacy in Trinidad

The following is the last in a four part series by historian Dr Claudius Fergus on the enduring—and arguably unjustifiable—heroic standing of Christopher Columbus in modern society: Socialist thinker Karl Liebknecht compared European imperialism to a cyclone spinning across the globe, driven and sustained by its militarism that “crushes people …

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