African Lives in Northern England

In the autumn of 2020, following the founding of the Culture Against Racism group and our President's signature of their Statement Against Racism, the Society supported the publication of a 2021 calendar, African Lives in Northern England, with volunteers working as part of an informal group writing and editing it.

Subsequently in 2021, a factsheet and a booklet giving much fuller information have been published, again with writing and editing work by volunteers from the Society, and we acted as fund-holders for grant aid received towards publication.

The Society is glad to have been able to offer its website to host further information and resources about the individuals and places featured in these publications, and background material. The project now has its own website, with the documents and much more on it

For further information, contact the project co-ordinator and editor, Beverley Prevatt Goldstein by e-mail.

Introduction

The calendar and booklet showcase the long history of African lives in Northern England, from Roman soldiers on Hadrian’s Wall to actors in the twenty-first century. The aim is to share the highlights, such as the people believed to be the first black editor and the first black J.P. in Britain, and the first black professional footballer in the world. Others include the enslaved woman who escaped across the Atlantic and settled in North Shields, the ANC fighter who settled in Tynemouth, and famous visitors such as Martin Luther King.

Main sources and references

The  informal group compiling the calendar drew on a number of sources for their information. The main ones were;

• John Charlton, Hidden Chains: The Slavery Business and North East England, Tyne Bridge Publishing, 2008. This was the fruit of The Remembering Slavery Archive Mapping and Research Project, led by the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle and assisted by local history groups. It uncovered a large amount of archival material in the region’s institutions, exposing many links between the North East and the slave trade. The guide to the project, published in 2007, and an illustrated booklet, are both available online. The e-newsletters of the group of volunteers working on this project (North East Slavery and Abolition Group, NESAG) contain a wealth of further information, and are available online from Tyne and Wear Archives.
• Sean Creighton, The Involvement of People of African Heritage in the North East, available online, draws on the material from the Remembering Slavery project, and adds much more. It is an updated version of Sean's article in North East History, vol 39 (2008), pp. 11-24,one of a number of articles in that volume relating to slavery and the slave trade. A pdf of this volume can be downloaded from the North East Labour History website.
• Peter Fryer, Staying Power, The History of Black People in Britain (second edition), Pluto Press, 2018
• David Olusoga, Black and British – A forgotten history, Book linked to the TV series, BBC/ Pan Macmillan 2016
• Nigel Todd, Black-on-Tyne   – the Black Presence on Tyneside in the 1860s, North East Labour History Society 1987. The background material collected for this is in a dossier of the same name, put together as a teaching resource at the same time. Follow this link for the collage on the front cover and the introduction. The items included are all in the Newcastle City Library Local Studies Collection, with the exception of the Black Diamond boxer who is in the Shipley Art Gallery.

Another useful reference book is David Renton, Colour Blind? Race and Migration in North East England, University of Sunderland Press, 2007.

In addition, Historic England and the National Trust have both recently brought out reports linking England's built environment with colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade, downloadable from their websites. They are;

• Dr Mary Wills,The Transatlantic Slave Economy and England’s Built Environment: A Research Audit, Historic England, 2020,  available for downloading in full.
• Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery, National Trust 2020, downloadable here

Text and picture sources for Calendar

Individuals and places featured in the Calendar are listed below in alphabetical order, not in order of the months in which they appear. Note; much fuller references, after further research, appear in the booklet. Many of those listed below also have Wikipedia entries.

Aballava (January)

Picture credit; Plaque, photo by courtesy Beverley Prevatt Goldstein.

References

• Anthony J. Birley, Septimius Severus: the African Emperor, Eyre and Spottiswoode 1971, pp, 265-6
• David J Breeze, Handbook to The Roman Wall, Fourteenth Edition, Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2006
• Beverley Prevatt Goldstein, News Bulletin 69, September 2020, published Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; follow this link to see a copy.

Aldridge, Ira (October)

Picture credit; James Northcote's painting of the actor as Othello is in Manchester Art Gallery, reproduced with permission from Alamy. Playbill: Public domain.

References

• Theresa Saxon, 'Ira Aldridge in the North of England: Provincial Theatre and the Politics of Abolition' in Britain's Black Past, edited by Gretchen H. Gerzina, Liverpool University Press, 2020 (pp 275-294).
• Dr Mary Wills, The Transatlantic Slave Economy and England’s Built Environment: A Research Audit, Historic England, 2020, downloadable here.

Coleridge-Taylor, George (December)

Picture credit; Photo taken by Yutaka Nagata, United Nations photo library, in United Nations and Sierra Leone, by Ade Daramy with permission from the author.

Coleridge-Taylor, Samuel (November)

Picture credit;  United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division via Wikimedia Commons

Constantine, Learie (July)

Picture Credit; Wikimedia Commons, from National Library of Australia - https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-162155046.

Craft, Ellen and William (April)

Picture credit; Ellen Craft; The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom, Wilbur Henry Siebert, Albert Bushnell, (Macmillan, 1898), p. 162, via Wikimedia Commons

References

• Ellen and William Craft, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or, The Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, Wm Tweedie, 1860, republished Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999.
• Nigel Todd, Black-on-Tyne   – the Black Presence on Tyneside in the 1860s, North East Labour History Society 1987
• Reports of the debates at the Newcastle Conference are in W. E. Adams, Memoirs of a Social Atom (London, 1903), and in the Newcastle Daily Chronicle and many other local newspapers at the time, as a search in the British Newspaper Archive will show.

Cummings, Ismael and Ivor (September)

Picture Credit; Windrush ship, Royal Navy official photographer. Photograph FL 9448 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums, downloaded from Wikipedia Commons

Durham, Jimmy  (May)

Picture credit; reproduced by permission of the DLI archives and Durham County Record Office, D/Lo/C 113

References

• Jimmy Durham, the Sergeant's Boy from Sudan (2014), BBC web page

Edwards, Celestine (June)

Picture credit;  reproduced by permission of National Archives; newspaper cutting, Sunderland Echo, 30 Sept, 1891, p. 3, sourced from Local History Library@ETR.

Back page, picture of plaque reproduced by permission of Sunderland City Council.

Equiano, Olaudah (Writers and Publishers, June)

Picture credit; Frontispiece of his 1789 book, public domain, www.bl.uk

• Bugg, John, 'The Other Interesting Narrative: Olaudah Equiano's Public Book Tour', Proceedings of the Modern Language Assocation, vol 121, no 5 (Oct 2006), pp. 1424-1442 (available via JStor for those with access to that)
• Carretta, Vincent, 'Questioning the Identity of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African], in The Global Eighteenth Century, ed by Felicity A Nussbaum, (Baltimore, 2003), pp 226-35.
• Creighton, Sean, The Involvement of People of African Heritage in the North East, available online.

Fifefield, William (working class residents, February)

Picture Credit; the Black Gate, Newcastle (part of Newcastle Castle), photo taken by Don O'Meara

References

• William’s obituary is in the Newcastle Journal, 18 Jan 1834, while his son’s troubles with the law are in the Durham Chronicle, 13 January 1827, the Tyne Mercury, 23 December 1828, and the Newcastle Chronicle, 9 April 1831.
• Original research by Peter Livesey is summarised in Creighton, Sean, The Involvement of People of African Heritage in the North East, available online..
• Thanks to Adrian Osler for the information about the ‘Comfortable’,

Fisk Jubilee Singers (Entertainers, August)

Picture Credit; National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, USA via Wikimedia Commons

References

• The Library of Nineteenth-Century Photography
• Newcastle Daily Journal, 6 November 1873, p. 1, available through the British Newspaper Archive.

Kent, John (Africans in Uniform, May)

Picture credit: plaque reproduced by permission of Maryport town council.

• John Kent’s lengthy obituary was in the Carlisle Patriot of 23 July 1886.
• Ray Greenhow, in Britain’s First Black Policeman (Carlisle: Bookcase, 2018),
• Ray Greenhow, Black History Month contribution, at https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/article/section/bhm-firsts/john-kent-britains-first-black-policeman/.

King, Martin Luther (Orators, April)

Picture credit; Beverley Prevatt Goldstein

Macham, Mary Ann (Working class residents, February)

Picture credit; taken from Philip Spence, Robert & Mary Spence of North Shields, Reid and Co., in Newcastle (1939) used with permission from Breaking Chains Exhibition.

Reference

• Robert & Mary Spence of North Shields, Philip Spence, (Reid and Co., 1939) There are copies of this book in North Tyneside Libraries and the Lit and Phil, Newcastle. Follow this link to see a digital copy of this. Our thanks to the Lit and Phil, Newcastle, for scanning their copy and allowing to use it.

Omorogbe, Osa (Actors, October)

Picture credit; David Faulkner

O'Neal, Charles (Nationbuilders, December)

Picture Credit; Barbadosstamps.co.uk, Barbados Postal Service

Psyche (Untold stories, March)

Picture Credit; Yale Centre for British Art, via Wikimedia Commons.

Reference

• An article concerning the bust, and other eighteenth-century sculptures of Black figures, was published online by the Centre in November 2015.

Paul Robeson (Musicians, November)

Picture Credit; Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection, via Wikimedia Commons

Sibeko, Archie (nation-builder, December)

Picture credit: with permission from Steve Brock. Sibeko was also known as Zola Zembe and Zola Ntembe.

Reference

• Sibeko's autobiography, Freedom in our Lifetime,  co-authored by his wife Joyce (Leeson) was published by Unison, Northern Region in 1996 with sales proceeds to a schools project in Tyume valley, Eastern Cape, with which Archie and Joyce were associated. Two copies were presented to the Lit and Phil in Newcastle, and are available on loan.

Tyne Concert Hall

Picture Credit, Don O'Meara

Unknown young black servant

Picture credit; Laing Art Gallery/Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, with thanks for permission to use.

References

• Peter Fryer, Staying Power, The History of Black People in Britain (second edition), Pluto Press, 2018
• Hester Grant, The Good Sharps, Chatto and Windus 2020
• Northumberland Archives hold a copy of an  'indenture' for a man named Galba, described as a 'native of America' and probably an imported slave, contained within document bundle ZBL 35/1.

Victor (tombstone, January)

Picture credit: Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums

Reference

• Africans on Hadrian’s Wall World Heritage Site, a blog by Bill Griffiths and Alex Croom, on the Arbeia section of Tyne and Wear Museums and Archives website.

Wellesley-Cole, Robert (medicine, September)

Picture credit: Wikipedia Commons, from an anonymous photographer

West Indian Cricket Team 1923  (Sports People, July)

Picture credit: Team picture reproduced by permission of Alamy.

Wharton, Arthur (Sports People, July)