The Kwame Ture Ed­u­ca­tion and De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre has wel­comed the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion’s de­ci­sion to re­name Ox­ford Street as Kwame Ture Street, de­scrib­ing it as a his­toric recog­ni­tion of one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s most in­flu­en­tial sons.

In a state­ment, the cen­tre said the move rep­re­sents far more than the chang­ing of a street sign, call­ing it “a mean­ing­ful step to­wards re­claim­ing our his­to­ry, af­firm­ing our iden­ti­ty and recog­nis­ing those whose lives and work have in­spired gen­er­a­tions to strug­gle for jus­tice, dig­ni­ty and lib­er­a­tion.”

Kwame Ture, born Stoke­ly Carmichael in Trinidad, be­came a lead­ing fig­ure in the Black Pow­er move­ment in the Unit­ed States and lat­er adopt­ed the name Kwame Ture.

He was a cham­pi­on of Pan-African­ism, African uni­ty and Black self-de­ter­mi­na­tion.

The cen­tre said the re­nam­ing car­ries added sig­nif­i­cance be­cause of the work tak­ing place dai­ly at its East Port-of-Spain fa­cil­i­ty.

Through Black Stud­ies, youth de­vel­op­ment, CXC class­es, skills train­ing, fi­nan­cial and so­cial pro­grammes, en­tre­pre­neur­ship and com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tives, the cen­tre said it con­tin­ues to trans­late Kwame Ture’s vi­sion in­to prac­ti­cal ac­tion.

It added that the street re­nam­ing should serve as a re­minder that the best way to ho­n­our Ture is by em­brac­ing the prin­ci­ples that guid­ed his life, in­clud­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion, jus­tice, po­lit­i­cal con­scious­ness and ser­vice to the peo­ple.

“His un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to or­gan­i­sa­tion, jus­tice, po­lit­i­cal con­scious­ness, African uni­ty, dis­ci­plined lead­er­ship, root­ing out in­sti­tu­tion­al racism and ser­vice to the peo­ple must guide our ac­tions if this ho­n­our is to have last­ing mean­ing,” the cen­tre said.

Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne un­veiled the new Kwame Ture Street sign on Sat­ur­day dur­ing African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions, de­scrib­ing the move as a ma­jor step in ef­forts to ad­dress the cap­i­tal’s colo­nial lega­cy.

“This is a very im­por­tant mo­ment in the his­to­ry of the city,” Al­leyne said, adding that the re­nam­ing was “the cul­mi­na­tion of cen­turies of work by our an­ces­tors and decades of work by the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee.”

The cen­tre said it con­grat­u­lates the City Cor­po­ra­tion on the ini­tia­tive and hopes the move en­cour­ages fur­ther ef­forts to “de­colonise our pub­lic spaces while pro­mot­ing the val­ues and vi­sion of the he­roes we choose to ho­n­our.”