Visitors - Engaging Individuals

“Ras Tafari came to drum beats.
The Negus
God-like on a golden lion
rode shafts of sunlight
and burnt away the rain…”
(Raymond Mair, 1966, published in ‘these days i celebrate’)
Our visiting exhibition commemorating the visit to Jamaica and other Caribbean islands by Ethopian Emperor Haile Selassie I in 1966, 50 years ago, has drawn wide-ranging interest.

The UWI often talks about its first students – the fabled 33 students from across the Caribbean, 23 men and 10 women, who in 1948 were the pioneers of a tertiary education product that would grow to reach tens of thousands at a time.
But there is another group of pioneers – the first students to graduate from the then University College of the West Indies (UCWI).