Port of Spain, Trinidad – March 19, 2011 – September 25, 2011 marks the 100th birthday of Dr. Eric Williams, Trinidad and Tobago’s first Prime Minister and Head of Government for a quarter of a century until his death in 1981.

Williams, a scholar of international renown for his seminal work, Capitalism & Slavery, re-framed the historiography of the British trans-Atlantic slave trade and, it could be argued, its concomitant European incarnations, and established the contribution of Caribbean slavery to the development of both Britain and America.

In celebration of this milestone, and as a tribute to his work as one of the region’s premier statesmen, The Eric Williams Memorial Collection Research Library, Archives & Museum (EWMC) at The University of the West Indies and the Trinidad & Tobago Postal Corporation (TTPost) are proud to announce the release of six Eric Williams Centenary Stamps, a Souvenir Sheet and First Day Cover.

The Stamp Launch will take place at 6.30 pm on Tuesday, April 5, 2011 at the National Library in Port of Spain. The stamps, designed by Trinidad and Tobago philatelist Albert Sydney, will be available until December 31, 2011, subject to availability.

The souvenir collection depicts various images of Dr. Williams throughout his life and political career. One of the stamps was designed by Georgia Cordner, a student of Bishop’s Centenary College in Port of Spain, and the winner of the Eric Williams Centenary Stamp Design Competition, sponsored by the EWMC and UNESCO.

As Eric Williams was partially deaf, another of the stamps tacks on 50 cents to the most widely used $1 denomination, with the proceeds donated to the hearing impaired of Trinidad and Tobago. Both the Design Competition and the additional stamp for charity are “Firsts” for TTPost.

Inaugurated in 1998 by former U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, the EWMC is the English-speaking Caribbean’s first effort at establishing an entity akin to a U.S. Presidential Library. In 1999, it was named to UNESCO’s prestigious Memory of the World Register.

In addition to the physical repository at UWI the EWMC, among other activities, promotes and organizes: conferences, symposia, lectureships, book publications and launches, a regional Essay

Competition, and the first annual CAPE Prize in History. Community-based initiatives are two school pilot projects – The Baby Think it Over anti-teen pregnancy programme, and The Killing Fields: Man’s Inhumanity to Man – a Genocide/Holocaust programme.

With the help of Cheryl Andrews Marketing Communications, a boutique public relations firm that specializes in travel, tourism and real estate, the EWMC is able to spread the word about the work being done to inspire and guide the youth of the Caribbean – its most precious resource.

For more information, visit www.ericwilliamsmemorialcollection.org, www.cam-pr.com or email: ewmc@ewmc-tt.org.