Pan-Africanist

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Williams, Henry Sylvester  

Charles Rosenberg

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

convened the first Pan-African Conference in July 1900 in London, England, in the midst of a legal career that included admission to the bar in England, South Africa (Cape Colony), and Trinidad and election as probably the first African-descended borough councillor in Britain.

Williams was born on Arouca, Trinidad, the son of Henry Bishop Williams, a wheelwright, and Elizabeth Williams, immigrants from Barbados. Barbados was strongly influenced by British culture, while Trinidad had a majority French–Creole African population, with Indian indentured laborers imported starting in 1845. Williams attended a village government school, closely associated to the Church of England, to which he belonged his entire life.

At age fifteen, he passed an examination for admission to the Men's Normal School in Port-of-Spain, and in 1886 he passed a teaching exam (Mathurin, p. 21). His first teaching assignment, in 1887 was La Fortunee Bien Venue Government School ...

Article

Williams, Henry Sylvester  

Peter Fraser

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
19 March 2007
Published online:
30 September 2008

Founder of the African Association, which held the first major Pan‐African Conference in 1900. Born in Arouca in Trinidad, Williams qualified as a teacher and taught until 1890, when he left for North America. Little is known of his time there but he arrived in England in 1896, studied law, and married an Englishwoman, Agnes Powell. He lectured for the Temperance Society and on colonial topics. He formed the African Association, mainly with fellow West Indians, and organized the Conference in London in July 1900. Its aims were to secure ‘the full rights and promote [the] business interests’ of all Africans. Encouraged initially by Booker T. Washington, it was attended by W. E. B. DuBois, Washington's rival. DuBois was to call the second conference at the end of the First World War His hand can be seen in its final declaration that the ...

Article

Williams, Henry Sylvester  

Chris Saunders

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

pan- Africanist activist and lawyer, was born on 19 February 1869 in Arouca, Trinidad. The eldest son of immigrants from Barbados, Williams attended local schools and taught in them until 1890, when he left for the United States. He went on to Canada and in 1893–1894 attended Dalhousie University in Halifax. He then moved to London, where he enrolled at King’s College to study Latin and was admitted to Gray’s Inn in December 1897. He earned his living as a lecturer for the Temperance Society, while lecturing widely on colonial matters, and he founded the African Association in the British capital to promote the causes of African people. In 1898 he married Agnes Powell, a typist from Gillingham, Kent, despite her father’s objections to her marrying a man of color.

Williams s greatest claim to fame is that he was mainly responsible for calling the first Pan African ...