I was delighted by Nick Clegg’s excellent statement welcoming the start of Black History Month. As he says, this is an important aspect of British history whatever our background.
Black History Month exists because black history has long been overlooked. Large swathes of social history, the story of the working class and women battling for rights, have also been relatively absent from standard history taught in schools.
The two strands are often intertwined. The great abolitionist Thomas Clarkson led a grassroots movement against slavery in tandem with the likes of slave-turned-abolitionist Oladuah Equiano, whose writings helped pave the way for emancipation, and Ottobah Cugoano.
The campaign was strongest in the north, particularly Manchester, where the Victorian underclass saw a direct link between the same elite who ran the brutal slave trade and those that oppressed them.
For me Black History Month is about more than discovering hidden histories, it is also about empowerment through knowledge. For those whose ancestors experienced slavery and whose roots and culture in Africa were severed it is an important opportunity to reconnect not just with individual achievements of the past but also with a deeper appreciation of the long and often glorious history of Africa before it was impoverished and subjected to under-development.
We are less than 50 years since James Brown released ‘Say It Loud I’m Black and Proud’ and the British Lovers rock group Brown Sugar sang ‘Black is my colour’. They were part of a movement to reclaim pride in self, soothing ointment on the scars inflicted by racism, throwing off the psychological shackles that Bob Marley had earlier identified when he sang about emancipation from mental slavery.
We are less than two generations from colonialism and not many more from the trauma of enslavement. People of African descent are still healing, still journeying to emancipation as author Dr Joy DeGruy so insightfully dissects.
Black History Month is part of that process, of climbing to Dr Martin Luther King’s mountain top while the rocks of casual and institutional racism continue to tumble down, wounding, denying opportunities and knocking far too many off the mountain altogether as witnessed by the extent of mental illness and black unemployment running at twice the rate for white working age people.
While I was Editor of New Nation I relentlessly plugged ‘When We Ruled’ by the British historian Robin Walker for his expertise concisely highlighting the amazing achievements, inventions and civilisations in Africa.
African-American historian Runoko Rashidi has conducted fabulous research into ancient African civilisations across the world, from the Olmec of Mexico to the Far East, and University of Chichester lecturer Dr Hakim Adi and Andrew Muhammed have both delved to the Middle Ages and beyond to bring us the untold story of black history in Britain. They are modern-day Griots preserving a tradition of passing down history. The struggle to maintain this in the face of the twin factors of enslavement and Westernisation was, for me, a key point of Alex Haley’s ‘Roots’.
The youth of Britain are hungry. When rapper Akala (brother of Ms Dynamite) gives his lectures, the reaction afterwards is a sight to behold. I bet there has never been a stabbing or shooting committed by a young person who knows their roots. No-one defends a postcode if they know about the city of Carthage and no-one flunks education if they know about the University of Timbuktu.
Dr King said “We are made by history” and I believe this to be true. Our traditions and behavioural patterns – good and bad – all come from somewhere. Whether that is traces of the rich roots in Africa or the coping mechanisms of surviving the Maafa (middle passage) and enslavement.
Modern ‘urban’ grime and Hip Hop lyrics may be clouded with materialism, anger and misogyny but musical patterns can be traced back to music and dance that bonded the community, gave thanks for their relationship to the earth and cosmos and cemented respect for women and men, the young and the elders.
So while it is important that people of all backgrounds learn about the black contribution to Britain and the world there is an additional infusion for people of African descent; it is about learning more about themselves and being empowered so they can step forward with confidence, the spirit of their ancestors beside them as they rise. Happy Black History Month!
* Lester Holloway is a former councillor and member of the Equalities Policy Working Group, and a member of the Race Equality Taskforce
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10 Comments
I welcome this with enthusiasm Lester. This approach should be copied in the history curriculum (if it isn’t already). I think it is worth mentioning that I get nervous about diversity and history teaching because sometimes it appears to be about tokenism, but this is not tokenism at all and it is fascinating.
Hi Eddie, yes there was a big campaign earlier this year after the Daily Mail suggested Michael Gove was about to axe Mary Seacole, the Victorian Crimean war nurse Mary Seacole, from the National Curriculum.
I was a founder of a campaign to keep Seacole in the classroom. Our petition attracted 36,000 signatures, an EDM was backed by 89 MPs including 16 Liberal Democrats, and a host of prominent figures lent their support from Rev’d Jesse Jackson, Archbishop of York John Sentamu, author Zadie Smith, and children’s writer Michael Rosen to broadcaster Bonnie Greer.
Many citizens of all backgrounds felt that while historical figures needed to be recognised on merit there has long been a tendency to venerate those from a narrow spectrum, whether that be Winston Churchill, Oliver Cromwell and royalty.
Nick Clegg declared that any plan to get rid of Seacole was not going to happen and eventually Gove bowed to the pressure and actually elevated this historical figure in the curriculum and included many more, from, to first leader of a free Ghana Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta from Kenya, the arrival of Caribbean immigrants from their arrival on the Windrush 36 years ago, and “Britain’s retreat from Empire including independence for India and the Wind of Change in Africa.”
Social history, which as I mention in the op-ed, has been excluded as much as black history was another element to this campaign. Gove also included for the first time key elements of Britain’s social history.
I believe this campaign was a testament to the value Britons of every background place on British history being inclusive.
Here’s three of the many links (below), or you can visit my blog and enter “Seacole” in the search engine: http://cllrlesterholloway.wordpress.com
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/09/michael-gove-bid-to-rub-out-mary-seacole
http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/michael-gove-secretary-of-state-for-education-keep-mary-seacole-on-the-national-curriculum
http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2012-13/919
Erm…..didn’t the Libdem’s allow those racist Home Office vans to appear???
Martin, in a word: no! Everyone from Clegg down has made it clear the Lib Dems weren’t informed of this and strongly disapproved. Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats proposed an emergency motion in Glasgow condemning the immigration vans, which had supporters at a high level, but sadly it didn’t wasn’t successful in the Sunday ballot (although EMLD saw their substantive motion on race equality in education and employment passed unanimously). So, although the party grassroots haven’t had an opportunity to make a clear statement on the immigration vans, our ministers have. However as Caron on LDV has written about recently, the immigration posters were being displayed throughout the conference season which was extremely disappointing. The posters are no different to the vans in my book. They don’t include the words “Go Home” but carry the same intimidating and divisive message. I am confident that the Lib Dem side of the coalition have made it abundantly clear these tactics are not acceptable, so if they reappear between now and the election it calls into serious question the coalition protocol about jointly agreeing things. So we’ll have to watch this space…
@Lester
Thank you for that response. A lot of Libdems become uncomfortable when those vans are mentioned.
“I bet there has never been a stabbing or shooting committed by a young person who knows their roots. No-one defends a postcode if they know about the city of Carthage and no-one flunks education if they know about the University of Timbuktu.”
While I don’t disagree with the overall message, don’t oversell it. Breivik knew his roots and committed a number of shootings, and there are white children who are aware that the University of Oxford exists who still flunk education. I don’t think black children are immune to the same forces that arre operating on white children.
Keep the flow Lester, people have much to learn.
The statue of Abraham Lincoln opposite Manchester Town Hall is one of the sights I always try and take visitors to see.
If I hadn’t seen this article black history month would have just passed me by. I am not sure that all African history is black history. There is no agreement about Egypt and I believe that Carthage isn’t.
However I would like to know more about the role of blacks in the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages and Tudor and Stuart times. It is a shame that there are not more programmes on TV that discussed this type of history.
@Richard S – I hope I wasn’t overselling it, I was just making the point that black youth who are conscious of their history are far less likely to engage in self-destructiveness or seek to harm others in part due to self-hatred. I don’t think the comparison with white youths knowing about Oxford Uni is the right one; the mention of Timbuktu’s great university was simply an illustrative example of a wider appreciation of history.
@Amalric – There has long been a debate about whether north Africa was ‘black’ at the time of Yeshua (Christ) and before. Obviously this would include Carthage. Those that argue it that it wasn’t tend not to support that argument with much evidence, whereas those that do will make specific reference to the movement of lighter skinned people (Arabs) from the north, especially in 5th and 6th centuries. Personally I think it’s terribly inconsistent for some people to on the one hand accept that the Moors of Spain and Italy were black and on the other to maintain that the ancestors of the Moors across north Africa were not. The fact is that ‘black African’ has always been a real mix of pheona types and shades. Indeed southern Africa had a long established lighter-skinned tribe long before Europeans got there. Carthage and Hannibal may not have been ‘as black’ as, say, Nubia but it was by any reckoning a black city at the height of its’ powers. A similar debate applies to Egypt. Some African historians argue that there has, over a long period of time, been a concerted effort to ‘whiten’ the history of Kemet, but the features of many statues (even with the noses habitually knocked off) suggest otherwise, and painted statues and figurines back this up. Also, right across north Africa, the Saudi peninsula and the Middle East live often small (and often impoverished) communities with Nubian features and very dark skin who seem to have been there longer than the majority population around them.