Henry Sylvester Williams

Henry Sylvester Williams was born in Trinidad, in 1867 or 1869 according to differing sources, the eldest son of Elizabeth Payne and Henry Bishop Williams, a carpenter from Barbados. He qualified as a primary school teacher at 17, worked as a headmaster, and in 1890 became a founding member of the Trinidad Elementary Teachers Union.

He migrated to England in 1896 and studied law at Gray's Inn. Alarmed by the European partition of Africa that followed the Berlin Conference, he formed the African Association in London in 1897 to publicise injustices against African peoples and promote their interests.

Williams convened the First Pan-African Conference, held at Westminster Town Hall in London from 23 to 25 July 1900, with himself as general secretary. It brought together delegates from Africa, the Caribbean, Britain and the United States, was covered in the leading London newspapers, and is credited with giving currency to the term Pan-African, a word Williams is said to have coined.

The conference turned the African Association into the Pan-African Association, with Williams as honorary secretary. He travelled to Jamaica, Trinidad and the United States to set up branches, and launched a monthly journal, The Pan African, in 1901, which lasted only a few issues.

Williams became a qualified barrister, reportedly the first Black man admitted to the Bar in Cape Town, and was elected a borough councillor in London, one of the first two Black councillors in the city. He represented African delegations seeking redress from the British government, returned to Trinidad in 1908, and died there in 1911, remembered as a father of Pan-Africanism.