Thursday, June 11 2009

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Willie Ricks...

THE EMANCIPATION Support Committee calls for the re-naming of the Lady Young Road to the Kwame Ture Road, in commemoration of the positive influences that Kwame Ture had on the Civil Rights Movement through-out the World.

Chairman of the Emancipation Support Committee — Khafra Kambon, shared that, “It is vital for our communities to be connected and feel the positive spirits of the past — thus the call for the road which has long been an artery which connects Laventille, Belmont and Morvant to the heart of Trinidad and Tobago, to bear the name of someone who fought for the relevance, and civil freedom of each of us”.

At a press conference at Kwame Ture’s childhood home in Belmont, Kambon welcomed Civil rights veteran and “fiery orator” Brother Mukasa Dada, also known as Willie Ricks to Trinidad and Tobago. Ricks now 66 shared that as young men, he and Kwame Ture worked side by side in the fight for equality in the turbulent 60s.

He and Kwame were 17 years old when they started the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) of the 1960s which gave rise to the Black Panther Movement and together coined the phrase “Black Power”. Willie Ricks, will be the feature speaker at the launch of the Kwame Ture Memorial Lecture Series, which will be held today at 5 pm at the Lion’s Cultural Centre, Port-of-Spain. He will speak on the topic, “Seize the Time: Black Power and Pan Africanism as Forces of Change.”