The picture above shows Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressing a crowd with a megaphone in Roxbury, a neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 22, 1965. I personally believe that there are different sides to every man and woman in the world. I don’t think that anybody is one way 100% of the time. You […]
After watching this BBC episode, Black and British, last night and giving myself time to think before writing, the thing I found most surprising isn’t necessarily the information itself, but the ideas that spawn from the program. The fact that Britain is whitewashing their history when it comes to the topic is black people is […]
In the postcolonial world where the history is presented from a white point of view, it is easy to forget that cultures mixing is not a recent history. This white-washing of history leads us to overlook major accomplishments and historical context of all cultures. While watching the BBC documentary Black and British I found myself saying […]
One of the details from the documentary that I found the most interesting was the origin of the medieval depictions of the three wise men, that still persists in some Christian iconography today, with one of the Wise men being pictured as African. It was interesting to hear how the medievalist explained that medieval Brits […]
In the first episode of Black and British: A Forgotten History, the true past of Britain and some of its first black settlers is revealed and honored. From Beachy Head Lady, Francis Barber, to John Blanke, David Olusoga takes the audience on a tour throughout Britain and Ghana to remember the forgotten past of the […]
The United States and England share a complex history that involves embracing the several cultures within them while simultaneously attempting to erase those same cultures when it is most convenient. Some feel that complete integration is needed while others think it is more important to embrace the large immigrant community. In the BBC series there […]
Honestly, I think the most surprising thing to me was also the most surprising to the historian David Olusoga as he began this research. To think that black history in Britain goes back 1800 years is pretty astonishing. To be honest, I haven’t ever really thought about the existence of black people in other countries. […]
Beyond the American Revolution and the Pilgrims voyage to America, British History is wildly untaught in the United States. Nevertheless, England and her history have always conjured lily-white images of rivalries, monarchs, and colonization. Therefore, learning the story of Francis Barber was an interesting spin on my previous notions. Formerly enslaved in Jamaica, Barber was […]
In Black and British, I was most captivated by the narrative about the “Beachy Head Lady.” Amidst 300 sets of unidentified bones, historians settled on hers in order to learn more about the region. They established that she would have been living in that same town around 125-240 AD. With the forensic recreation of her, […]
In all honesty, up until now I never really thought much about what a person of color’s experience might be in Britain. Yes, I, of course, knew that people of color did, in fact, exist in Britain, but I never really acknowledged the fact that just like people of color in America, they too have […]
For your fourth post, we’re re-examining British history and public memory through a careful examination of the intersection between Black identity and British identity. Together, our readings and viewings will help us think through the complex relationships of race and nation in historical and contemporary moments. We will also consider how the public memory of […]