Black History Month - Black History is British History

 

Black History is British History

October is the month designated for Black History but I have always wondered why Black history, my history, should be relegated to one month.  Part of creating an unprejudiced and tolerant society is having an understanding of history, of culture and of difference.  Removing division is to look at Black history as British history.  It isn’t separate but integral into understanding what makes Britain, Britain.  I challenge Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech delivered at a Conservative Association meeting in 1968.  He draws on the perils of the “Commonwealth immigrant” (Powell, 1968) who, in his view “…came to Britain as a full citizen” (Powell, 1968).  It’s funny, I wonder how many “full citizen[s]” experienced the torrent of abuse, the hate crimes, and the disadvantage that my Black British ancestors did.  My Mother, born in Ealing to Grenadian parents and my Father, born in Trinidad, and immigrant to this country in 1966, have talked to me about growing up in London and the unspeakable things they tolerated.  I often wonder what my Grandparents thought.  I have a daughter; what if she told me it was commonplace for her and her Black friends to have peanuts thrown at them during lessons or that she was called a gollywog (a caricature on jam and marmalade jars that became used as a racial taunt).  Or for fear of ridicule from peers, fashioned every excuse not to go swimming because our hair shrinks when wet.  I would be incensed but it was a different time.  My Father enjoys Jazz music, and pronounced it ‘ja-hz’ because he thought the Queen’s English would assimilate him better in British culture rather than his thick Trini accent.  Typical of many Black folks, my parents just got on with it for one reason or another - perhaps under the guise of the very British characteristic to ‘stiff upper lip’, or in my Fathers case, just for a ‘better life’ in the UK and not in the Caribbean where (in the main) one was not castigated for shade of skin, no - but economic opportunity was limited.  What a perplexing consideration with apparently opposing paradigms.  The acceptance of one because there is benefit in the other. 

Black British history is largely understood in terms of Windrush - the mass descent (on invitation) to help rebuild a Britain ravaged by the ramifications of the Second World War. Powell lamented that Blacks would unfairly benefit “from the vote to free treatment under the National Health Service”, but he failed to mention the insurmountable sacrifice and invaluable contribution Blacks made to leave their families and rebuild a foreign country; the Motherland as it was called.  My Grandmother, Pamela Augustina Ramirez, worked in the NHS - she was Matron in Edgware General hospital.  The role of Matron was dissolved in 1972 but during her tenure, this was a prestigious position as she was the most senior

nurse in the hospital. 

I am from a ’normal’ family!  I have 4 siblings and I am the eldest. Each of us would comment differently on our Black experience.  Our passage into adulthood was made easier by our parents - as much as was possible anyway.  My Mother was conscious of how areas can limit opportunity so I went to school in Mill Hill, North West London.  Put it this way, I was one of six Black girls in my year, which had ramifications within itself, for example I remember being called ‘coconut’ or Bounty – yes, as in the chocolate bar!  My parents were not only profoundly aware of where we went to school, but where we lived.  It was deemed essential to consider the settings where my siblings and I were growing up.  My parents shared the pre-emptive concerns of many Black families and as an adult I fully appreciate their decision-making.  My sister and brothers would never forgive me if I was to share a pic of us all.  Instead I have chosen to share one of my parents and I, when I was two years old.  I still have this little coat. The other is of my parents now.

There is a tendency to look at BHM through American eyes; we know about the accomplishments of Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman et al.  It’s also quite rightly understood in terms of slavery.  But what about Black British history pre-Windrush?  For example, have you heard of the ‘Beachy Head Lady’, a sub-Saharan African whose skull was discovered in Sussex in 1953?  It is believed she lived in AD245 and her face was cleverly created in 2014 using 3-D imaging techniques (BBC News, 2014).  Or have you heard of the ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’?  She was buried with her bangles, pendants, earrings and many more precious items in first century York.  She was of North African descent and incredibly wealthy (Yorkshire Museum, 2020).  Or how about the Aurelian Romans at Hadrian’s Wall? Historians believe an army of at least 500 ‘Moors’ occupied a fort near Carlisle during the 3^rd century (Bernard, 2011)!  This is British history and it is rarely told unless sort out.  There are more stories I know nothing about, and I will be first to admit how little my knowledge is on the subject, but I have a lifetime to learn.  One thing is for sure – Black history is a ‘forgotten’ history.  One hopes with the tide changing, Black history will become the status quo.