AFRO-CARIBBEAN & BLACK BRITISH

The Black Cultural Archives Centre

The Black Cultural Archives Centre celebrates the history of black Britons. It was set up in 1981.

Location: 1 Windrush Square, SW2 1EF

Website: https://bcaheritage.org

Olaudah Equiano

Location: 37 Tottenham Street, W1T 4RU

George the Poet

George the Poet (n George Mpanga) was born into a British-Ugandan and drew up on St Raphael's Estate in Neason. He studied at the University of Cambridge and soon after graduating secured a recording contract. However, he found that the industry was not willing to grant him the creative freedom that he wished to have. He developed a public profile through his podcast Have You Heard George's Podcast? This mixed social commentary and music.

Darcus Howe

Race Today was a monthly magazine that addressed a range of issues that impacted Britain's Afro-Caribbean and South Asian communities. A number of the periodical's founders had links to the British Black Panthers. From 1973 until 1988 it was edited by Darcus Howe.

Fela Kuti

The Nigerian musician Fela Kuti (1938-1997) studied music at Trinity College of Music. While doing so, he lived in Shepherds Bush.

Location: 12 Stanlake Road, W12 7HP

Trinity College of Music, 11-13 Mandeville Place, W1U 3AJ (blue, orange)

Website: https://felakuti.com www.trinitycollege.com www.trinitylaban.ac.uk/alumni/alumni-profiles/fela-kuti

The New Cross Fire

The New Cross Fire of early 1981 killed thirteen Black youths. The Met's patently lacklustre investigation into its circumstances triggered a major march.

Politics

In 1987 a quartet of Black and South Asians M.P.s were elected to the House of Commons - Diane Abbott, Paul Boateng, Bernie Grant. And Keith Vaz.

Boateng became the first Black Cabinet member in 2002.

Ignatius Sancho

Ignatius Sancho (c.1729-1780) was born on a slave ship as it was crossing from West Africa to the Spanish West Indian colony of New Granada. Shortly after his second birthday he was acquired by a new owner who took him to London and gave him to three unmarried sister who lived in Greenwich. Ignatius was a pudgy child. The sibs chose to give the surname Sancho, in honour of Sancho the squire in Miguel de Cervantes s (1547-1616) novel Don Quixote (1605 and 1615).

Stormzy (n Michael Omari Owuo jr.) is a successful U.K. rap star. In 2018 he established the Stormzy Scholarship at the University of Cambridge. Paying a maintenance grant and the tuition fees for two students a year.

With former Crystal Palace player Wilfried Zaha, Sormzy bought A.F.C. Croydon Athletic. In 2022 he set up

MerkyFC to create opportunities for young people in sport, the music industry, and the gaming industries. Two years later he opened

MerkyFC HQ as a physical facility. It included a soccer, a a recording studio, and a gaming complex.

The Windrush Scandal

In 2018 a political scandal erupted went it emerged that up to 50,000 Commonwealth who had arrived in Britain prior to 1960 might be deported after having spent decades living in Britain. It emerged that the Royal Marsden had halted the cancer treatment a 63-year-old man who had lived and worked in Britain for 44 years. The National Archives revealed that the Home Office had destroyed their landing slips in 2010 on the grounds of data protection.

It emerged that in the months prior to the scandal breaking the Home Secretary Amber Rudd had been in her correspondence with Prime Minister May about what she intended to do. She was compelled to resign after it became apparent that she could no longer control leaking from her department and that she had misled Parliament.

David Backhouse 2024