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What does it mean to be Welsh - BBC article

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What does it mean to be Welsh - BBC article

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Rugby, rolling hills, castles, coal and choirs - these are some of the images often associated with Wales and the Welsh.

But what are the experiences of Welsh people who have plural ethnic and cultural identities?

What preconceptions might a black child face in rural Powys or a hijab-wearing Muslim face in Cardiff?

Welshness should be seen as "a spectrum rather than a hierarchy... a patchwork quilt", said writer Hanan Issa.

She is one of a number of contributors to book Welsh Plural, a collection of essays "on the future of Wales" that offers "imaginative, radical perspectives that take us beyond the clichés and binaries that so often shape thinking about Wales and Welshness".

Writer and filmmaker Kandace Siobhan Walker, 27, said when she and her family moved from east London to Brecon Beacons National Park, Powys, in 2003 they were "poster children for multiculturalism, for globalisation".

From the age of nine until she left for university at 18, home was a remote house at the end of a bridleway.

She said it was difficult finding anyone who knew how to work with afro-textured hair so a hairdresser from over the border in Hereford would travel to see the family at home, her mother, who remains in the family home, found a man in Bristol who could order in Jamaican ingredients, and finding somewhere that stocked her favourite Caribbean drink sarsaparilla was a regular mission.

'Why is she here?'

In her essay, Lights in the Dark: Notes towards a personal history of Wales in the 21st Century, Kandace writes about being "tolerated nowhere, questioned everywhere".

Asked about what experiences led her to write those words, she recalled a time when she was 14 and a woman stopped her in a supermarket carpark.

"She asked me what tribe I was, I was like, 'what you're talking about?'," she said.

She said hikers were often surprised to see a young black girl in the rural Welsh hills: "Even if I was just in my own garden, walkers would be thinking I'm another walker - and I'm like, 'I'm in a dressing gown'.

"There's that implicit idea, 'why is she here?'"

'Where are you from?

She also writes about the "everyday dispossession" of white strangers asking 'where are you from?' - "a classic".

"It's a very loaded question and I think people know that," she explained.

"'You come from somewhere else, maybe your family comes from somewhere else, or like your ancestors do' they know that history is fraught and so it feels often quite entitled... 'what trauma do you come from? Like, what's gone on there?'"

She said by the time she got into her 20s she started simply saying, 'I'm from here'.

"I don't want to get into it with strangers usually."

She said when a black person asks the same question "it's almost always a completely different conversation because they're going to tell me where they're from".

"It's more like an excitement, we're going to compare, take out our little family histories and be like 'look how kind of similar bit different they are'."

She said white people who ask her where she is from have usually "decided their history is kind of ubiquitous and uninteresting that they don't need to explain themselves to me".

Kandace, who now lives in south London, said she wrote her contribution to the book at a time when she was thinking more about "purposely identifying as Welsh" and "who decides that".

"What happens if I start telling people I'm Welsh and just letting them argue it out for themselves," she said.

She said for a long time she was "trying to let it not matter too much where I came from, or who I came from in terms of people - but eventually I just realised it was such an integral part of my life - my dad's family are African American and my mum's family are Jamaican Canadian...

"We moved to London but then moved to Wales so we've never fitted into a specific like pattern or group in terms of eras of migration."

She said through her writing she had realised "how much it meant to me to have grown up in Wales and be Welsh".

"I think Wales is just a fundamentally plural place, a place built on pluralities in its history and its culture and its language," she said.

"Despite kind of negative experiences I've had growing up, or even now, I always have hope and quite a lot of pride in Wales and Welsh culture."

Writer Hanan Issa, 35, from Cardiff, said is was a discussion about the "frustrations of how narrow the perception of Welshness is" at the Hay Festival with three other Welsh writers that eventually led them to work on the book.

She said she had always had a "plural perception of identity".

"I'm mixed race, I've got Welsh heritage and Iraqi heritage," she said.

She said people had sometimes assumed she was not Welsh because of her appearance.

"Not so much recently, but you know I have had experiences where people will say things like 'oh your English is very good'.

"It doesn't work, this idea that you have to look Welsh."

In her essay - Have you heard the one about the niqabi on a bus? - she recalls times people have "faced abuse because their outward appearance doesn't align with people's perception of Welshness".

She writes about the time her white mother, who was wearing a niqab, was abused by a man in Cardiff indoor market.

"Looming over her, he shouted in a Cockney accent, 'Why don't you go back to your own country'.

"Without missing a beat my little nan squared up to this bully saying, 'she's my daughter and she's Welsh but you are not. Why don't you do us a favour and go back to your country?'"

She concludes the anecdote: "While it is a story of triumph, Nan's defence relied on my mum's white Welshness to emphasise her right to belong here."

Hanan said there was a "very strange, luminous space between being seen as something foreign but having all these experiences that were very Welsh".

So, what does it mean to be Welsh?

Hanan said an integral part of Islamic faith is "khalifah", meaning caretaker.

She wrote: "Perhaps Wales and Welshness belongs to all those who care for her and the people who call her home."

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Identity: What does it mean to be Welsh?

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Rugby, rolling hills, castles, coal and choirs - these are some of the images often associated with Wales and the Welsh. But what are the experiences of Welsh people who have plural ethnic and cultural identities? What preconceptions might a black child face in rural Powys or a hijab-wearing Muslim face in Cardiff?

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From being treated as a rare, exotic creature, to being asked which side of your heritage you'd pick if you had to. Here are just a few preconceptions mixed-race people have to deal with, along with a few of the best things about being dual heritage.

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Things not to say to someone of mixed race - BBC Three

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From being treated as a rare, exotic creature, to being asked which side of your heritage you'd pick if you had to. Here are just a few preconceptions mixed-race people have to deal with, along with a few of the best things about being dual heritage.

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More and more people in the UK are mixed race, including famous celebrities like Meghan Markle and Zayn Malik.

In fact, between the years 2001 and 2011 - the last time a survey of the UK, called the census, took place - the number almost doubled.

The next time the census will happen is in 2021 and it's expected there'll be a big increase again.

Have a read and a watch of these young people talking about there experiences and leave us your comments below.

What does 'mixed race' mean?

Being mixed race can mean different things to different people.

Usually your parents and/or your grandparents are of different races or ethnicities. Sometimes the terms biracial, dual heritage and mixed heritage are used instead.

It can mean you get to enjoy the best bits of the different countries and cultures that your relatives have roots in, but it can also mean that you might stand out and look different from some of your family members and friends.

Newsround joined up with the BBC's news show for young people in Africa, What's New?, to speak to kids with African heritage and to find out what it's like growing up mixed race.

Tillie a.k.a. Chloe from CBBC's Almost Never

Tillie enjoys her mixed race identity but she had struggles when she was growing up.

Her dad's from Ghana and her mum's from England.

At school she was once excluded from P.E. for having big hair and some of her friends didn't believe she was mixed race.

But Tillie overcame her struggles and now she embraces her identity, and her heritage, more than ever.

Brother and sister Elouan and Amandine have family from Wales, France and Cameroon.

It means they speak different languages, enjoy different types of food at home and when it comes to football, they have a big advantage when picking which team to support!

But Elouan also feels like he stands out and feels different to other people.

Their mum is also mixed race and felt she stood out when she grew up in Africa but for different reasons.

Karim lives with his brothers and parents in London.

His father's family is from Morocco and his mum is from Spain.

Having family from different places means he can speak many languages and gets to enjoy lots of different types of food.

But it can also mean looking different to his cousins and sometimes feeling misunderstood by people.

Monifa and Naima's dad is from Nigeria and their mum is from England.

When they were very little they lived in South Africa and being mixed race there was a different experience to what it's like now living in the UK.

A big part of their life is having hair that's different from most of their friends' hair.

Some people used to touch and play with it and though it used to irritate Monifa at first, now she doesn't mind as much.
Co-commissioned by BBC's What's New? and Newsround. Produced by Nora Fakim and Sameena Misbahuddin.

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What's it like growing up with mixed heritage? - CBBC Newsround

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More and more people in the UK are mixed race, including famous celebrities like Meghan Markle and Zayn Malik. In fact, between the years 2001 and 2011 - the last time a survey of the UK, called the census, took place - the number almost doubled.

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Jassa Ahluwalia has mixed Indian and English heritage, and he looks white. He goes on a journey to explore his identity to try and answer his question: am I English?

Actor, director, and writer Jassa Ahluwalia has mixed heritage. His father is Indian, his mother is Anglo-Saxon. Jassa has white skin and speaks fluent Punjabi. Jassa and his sister Ramanique spent a large amount of their childhood living with and next door to their paternal grandparents in Leicester, where they were deeply immersed in Punjabi culture. Jassa speaks fluent Punjabi and has visited India several times.

As a young adult, he began to struggle with his sense of identity, and his place in a world which sees him as white, yet he found himself frustrated and unable to express his Indian heritage fully as an actor and performer. Jassa successfully landed acting work on top broadcast dramas and films, including notable theatre roles, as well as appearances on BBC's Peaky Blinders and Some Girls.

After Jassa was invited to speak at Tedx in India, he started a journey of exploring his identity on social media. He portrays himself and other characters and makes satirical comment on Indian and English identity issues. Recently he has started writing a book based on his experiences exploring identity. This programme follows Jassa as he visits family members, his father, mother, sister and influential writer and presenter Sathnam Sanghera. He discusses their experiences, as well as his own, to discover more about how his upbringing and his experiences have shaped his own sense of Englishness.

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BBC One - We Are England, Series 1, Jassa Ahluwalia: Am I English?

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Jassa Ahluwalia has mixed Indian and English heritage, and he looks white. He goes on a journey to explore his identity to try and answer his question: am I English? Actor, director, and writer Jassa Ahluwalia has mixed heritage. His father is Indian, his mother is Anglo-Saxon.

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The Chinese Labour Corps is one of the forgotten stories of World War One.

In 1916, the British army recruited thousands of Chinese men to work as labourers.

Some became skilled mechanics working on 'Deborah' the British D51 tank.

Many Chinese stayed on to dig cemeteries and carve headstones and some died after the shooting stopped in the Spanish flu epidemic in 1919.

This clip is from the series The World's War.

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History GCSE: The Chinese Labour Corps in World War One

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The Chinese Labour Corps is one of the forgotten stories of World War One. In 1916, the British army recruited thousands of Chinese men to work as labourers. Some became skilled mechanics working on 'Deborah' the British D51 tank.

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Our Migration Story: The Making of Britain presents the often untold stories of the generations of migrants who came to and shaped the UK.

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Holocaust Memorial Day (Jan 27th) Resources

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Holocaust Memorial Day (Jan 27th) Resources

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Here you will find resources to help your school mark Holocaust Memorial Day. We have a range of assemblies, lesson plans and activities to help your students learn about the Holocaust, Nazi Persecution, and genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur, as well as contemporary issues.

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A timeline of two millennia of world-shaping individuals and momentous events that define Black history

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The Danger of the Single Story - Ted Talk

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The Danger of the Single Story - Ted Talk

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger of a Single Story | TED

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Flt Sgt Peter Brown - Pilot of the Caribbean WW2

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Flt Sgt Peter Brown - Pilot of the Caribbean WW2

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Peter Devitt, curator at the Royal Air Force Museum, previously told the BBC Flt Sgt Brown "may be the last of the 450 young black volunteers from the West Indies, Caribbean, Africa and parts of the UK who joined the RAF and flew iconic aircraft like the Lancaster and Spitfire".

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Flt Sgt Peter Brown: WW2 veteran's funeral moved to RAF Central Church

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Peter Devitt, curator at the Royal Air Force Museum, previously told the BBC Flt Sgt Brown "may be the last of the 450 young black volunteers from the West Indies, Caribbean, Africa and parts of the UK who joined the RAF and flew iconic aircraft like the Lancaster and Spitfire".

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Brilliant, Black and Welsh: A celebration of 100 inspiring people

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To mark Black History Month Wales we look at the contribution of 100 outstanding black Welsh people

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Discover the extraordinary story of the Windrush, why it has been characterised as the foundation story of mass migration to Britain, and the experiences of the remarkable people who made Britain their home.

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Made in partnership with The Open University, with OU consultants Dr Mark Pinder and Dr Lystra Hagley-Dickinson ANGELA SAINI, Author, Superior: The Return of Race Science: I think we have a lot of preconceptions about what race really is. C. BRANDON OGBUNU, Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University: What is race has changed dramatically through time. JONATHAN MARKS, Professor of Anthropology, UNC-Charlotte: There is no official scientific definition of race. CAPTION: IS RACE A MYTH? MADE IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE OPEN UNIVERSITY CAPTION: FROM AN EARLY AGE WE'RE TAUGHT THAT PEOPLE OF THE WORLD ARE MADE UP OF DISTINCT, DIFFERENT RACES TV CHARACTER: We're all different. CAPTION: AND TALK OF RACE IS EVERYWHERE AROUND US IN SOCIETY SOPHIE WILLIAMS, Author, Anti-Racist Ally: I was aware that I wasn't white. TESSA MCWATT, Author, Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging: The teacher said, "No, no, Tess is something else." And everybody's eyes are on me, and I'm a really shy person. She said, "But what are you, Tessa?" ANGELA SAINI: A lot of people imagine that there is some biological tangibility to race, because we use it so much. Race really is a social construct, but just because something is a social construct, that doesn't mean it doesn't have meaning in peoples' lives like money, or the nation state, or democracy, or all these other things that define how we live, but are also constructed. C. BRANDON OGBUNU: It influences what you're eating, it influences the type of healthcare you have access to, the type of schooling you have access to, how people feel about you. I mean, it's a powerful marker for all of these things that we care about when we're trying to run a society. SOPHIE WILLIAMS: Race has never been something that I don't have to think about. It's put on to us. ANGELA SAINI: When you look at the history and origins of this idea, you start to see it for what it really is, which is the manifestation of power. CAPTION: THE TERM "RACE" FIRST EMERGED IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN THE LATE 16TH CENTURY - AND ORIGINALLY JUST MEAN "TYPE" ANGELA SAINI: People imagine that people have always thought about skin colour in this racialised way, and we really haven't. That idea is no more than a few hundred years old. JONATHAN MARKS: It's not really until the age of colonialism, in the 17th Century, that you start getting the idea that each continent has its own individual kind of people. It arose at a very specific moment in history. In the 17th Century, you're taking long trips by ship, and you're struck by how different people look than you remember them when you got on. CAPTION: IN 1735, SWEDISH SCIENTIST CARL LINNAEUS SET OUT TO CLASSIFY THESE APPARENTLY DIFFERENT PEOPLE ISABELLE CHARMANTIER, Head of Collections, The Linnean Society: So this is the first edition of Systema Naturae, so the Systems of Nature. And for man, Linnaeus distinguishes four varieties, these varieties correspond to the four continents. Where it really changes is in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae. This is the foundation of scientific racism. He brings in moral character, so the American is "red and choleric," and stands up straight. The European, "white, sanguine, and muscular" The Asian, "sallow, melancholic and stiff" The African, "black, phlegmatic and lazy" So these stereotypes have endured through the ages. CAPTION: THIS WAS JUST THE START OF WHAT CAME TO BE KNOWN AS "RACE SCIENCE" - A DISCIPLINE THAT EMERGED AT THE SAME TIME AS COLONIALISM AND SLAVERY. AND THAT WAS NO COINCIDENCE. SOPHIE WILLIAMS: If you're going to take a group of people, and you're going to decide that they're not people anymore, then you need something to justify that. ANGELA SAINI: You can be defined very differently depending on the country that you're in, or the time that you're in. And that's how these categories have always been used. They are political tools that change depending on their usefulness to whoever is doing the categorisation. CAPTION: BY THE 20TH CENTURY, RACE SCIENCE HAD GIVEN RISE TO EUGENICS - "THE SELECTION OF DESIRED HERITABLE CHARACTERISTICS IN ORDER TO IMPROVE FUTURE GENERATIONS". BRITANNICA CAPTION: EUGENICS WAS USED IN ITS MOST EXTREME FORM BY THE NAZIS TO SUPPORT THE EXTERMINATION OF ENTIRE RACES. CAPTION: AFTER WORLD WAR TWO, THE UN BROUGHT TOGETHER EXPERTS FROM ACROSS THE WORLD TO OFICIALLY DECLARE THAT THE IDEA OF DISTINCT RACES HAD NO BIOLOGICAL BASIS. CAPTION: WHEN THE HUMAN GENOME WAS SEQUENCED FOR THE FIRST TIME AT THE START OF THE 21ST CENTURY, THE DNA EVIDENCE ALSO CLEARLY CHALLENGED THE IDEA OF RACE AS ROOTED IN BIOLOGY. ANGELA SAINI: We are one of the most homogeneous species on the planet. Humans have far less genetic variation than chimpanzees do. And yet, those chimpanzees look the same to me. There were never any "pure" races, there is no gene that exists in all the members of one race and not another. There is no black gene, there is no white gene. JONATHAN MARKS: Human groups overlap completely in their genetic variation. CAPTION: SO IS THERE NO SCIENTIFIC BASIS FOR RACE AT ALL? ANGELA SAINI: In the same way that you're related to your family, you can get a kind of fuzzy genetic similarity. But when you get to the continental level, which is really where we're talking about race, that genetic similarity is so fuzzy, and so statistically weak, as to be almost meaningless. C. BRANDON OGBUNU: We have this envy of fields where things are hyper-simplistic. We want to be able to look at a genome and say that people are these kind of concrete immutable things, that cannot be changed. Genetics doesn't work that way, it's the product of many genes interacting with each other and their environments. To fully answer the question about what a living thing is it's going to be about much more than genes. ANGELA SAINI: If I were to go out on to the street today and find someone of Indian heritage like myself, and randomly then pick someone who is not of Indian heritage, it is perfectly statistically possible for my genome to have more in common with that person who isn't of Indian heritage than that person who is. CAPTION: IF THE IDEA OF RACE HAS BEEN CREATED BY SOCIETY, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR HOW WE SEE OURSELVES - AND OTHERS? TESSA MCWATT: Even though race itself is a construct, racism is real and we are not in a post-racial society. Race keeps making itself and power keeps making race. SOPHIE WILLIAMS: Even though we know that race isn't biological, we've been living with this idea of it being real for so long that it means that people who do have a shared racial identity have now cultural similarities which has been born out of hardship, but it's still beautiful and important. C. BRANDON OGBUNU: The biology of race is not a useful concept. I have a different historical trajectory, I love the African American tradition, but it's not better than anybody else's, it's just the one that I'm a part of. JONATHAN MARKS: I don't think we're going to stop classifying people, because I think that's how we make sense of the world. I think every generation is going to classify people according to the criteria that are politically important to them. SOPHIE WILLIAMS: I don't think we need to find new boxes to put people in, I think we now have the opportunity to say, we understand that all of these things are a spectrum, in a way that we hadn't considered before. So instead of finding new ways to categorise people we can just find new ways to exist better together. TESSA MCWATT: Race is a story that's handed down and handed around. But we can choose the stories that we tell.

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Made in partnership with The Open University, with OU consultants Dr Mark Pinder and Dr Lystra Hagley-Dickinson ANGELA SAINI, Author, Superior: The Return of Race Science: I think we have a lot of preconceptions about what race really is. C. BRANDON OGBUNU, Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University: What is race has changed dramatically through time.

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Members of the Windrush generation and their families joined HRH Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at London Waterloo...

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Black History Month UK magazine is launching a new campaign to mark Black History Month 2022 in October. Inspired by the 2022 Black Lives Matter events, the new campaign is called 'Proud To Be'.

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Celebrating Greatness BHM NPT pack Cymraeg

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Celebrating Greatness Back Hist Month NPT

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The National Archives - Black presence - Asian &Black history in Britain 1500 - 1850

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The National Archives - Black presence - Asian &Black history in Britain 1500 - 1850

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black and asian history; british history; african history; indian history; caribbean history; north africa; moors; west africa; west indies; north america; romans; scotland; tudors; elizabeth i; john hawkins; slave trade; slavers; slavery; slave resistance; royal african company; the triangular trade; east india company; anglo-indian relations; (dutch) united east india company; indentured labourers; servants

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ayahs and alternative employment; british army; indian army; royal navy; impressment; merchant navy; lascars; poverty; social conditions; black poor committee; sierra leone scheme; black loyalists; abolition of the slave trade; abolition of slavery; emancipation; legal rights of slaves; somerset case; lord mansfield; yorke-talbot ruling; gordon riots; cato street conspiracy; chartists; william cuffey;  religion; christianity; black musicians; black actors; black writers; asian writers; joseph emidy; george bridgewater; billy waters; olaudah equiano; ottobah cugoano; ignatius sancho; phillis wheatley; mary prince; sugar

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pepper; planters and plantations; cotton

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chintz; paisley; indian influences on british textiles; curiosities and exhibits; saartjie baartman; omai; captain james cook; racism; cartoons and caricatures; representing blackness.

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The interactive parts of this resource no longer work, but it has been archived so you can continue using the rest of it.

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Explore Black History Month 2023 content suitable for use with both primary and secondary school pupils. Each resource is accompanied by teacher notes to aid classroom use.

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We empower young people and educators across the UK to engage with Black British history 365 days a year.

One of our main goals since 2019 has been to embed Black histories into the UK national curriculum.

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We empower young people and educators across the UK to engage with Black British history 365 days a year. One of our main goals since 2019 has been to embed Black histories into the UK national curriculum.

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Black History is a global movement and an initiative to research and re-tell the history of people of African and African-Caribbean descent. In Wales, Black History is marginalised, overlooked and unrepresented, and Black History Wales' (BHW) objective is to change that.

The Black History Wales network is made up of over 126 pan-Wales organisations such as; youth charities, grassroots groups, schools, Further Education and Higher Education institutions representing people of different cultures, faiths and geographical locations who sit on our steering committee.

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Black History is a global movement and an initiative to research and re-tell the history of people of African and African-Caribbean descent. In Wales, Black History is marginalised, overlooked and unrepresented, and Black History Wales' (BHW) objective is to change that.

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Roman Empire Governed from York by Septimus Severus 1st Century

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Roman Empire Governed from York by Septimus Severus 1st Century

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St Hadrian - The African Abbot who helped shape the English Church 1st Century

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St Hadrian - The African Abbot who helped shape the English Church 1st Century

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St Hadrian: The African Abbot who helped shape the English Church

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St Hadrian of Canterbury played a pivotal role in the early history of the English Church. He was born in North Africa and travelled to Italy – most likely as a refugee – before making the journey to Canterbury. He was abbot of the monastery of St Peter and St Paul (later St Augustine’s) in Canterbu…

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Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761-1804) was raised as part of an aristocratic family in Georgian Britain. She was the illegitimate daughter of a young black woman named Maria Bell and a Royal Naval officer, Sir John Lindsay.

Dido spent much of her life at Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath in north London. She lived there with her great-uncle William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice. He presided over a number of court cases that examined the legality of the slave trade.

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Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761-1804) was raised as part of an aristocratic family in Georgian Britain. She was the illegitimate daughter of a young black woman named Maria Bell and a Royal Naval officer, Sir John Lindsay. Dido spent much of her life at Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath in north London.

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Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the English composer

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Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the English composer

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Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Picture: Getty

This bright composer defied societal odds in the early 20th century, so here's everything you need to know about his life, music and love of poetry.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an English composer, conductor and political activist who fought against race prejudice with his incredible compositions.

Born in Holborn in 1875 to an English mother and a father originally from Sierra Leone, he liked to be identified as Anglo-African - and was later referred to by white New York musicians as 'Black Mahler', owing to his musical success.

His name was given to him after the famous poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge who, curiously, became a great source of inspiration during his career.
Read more: 9 black composers who changed the course of classical music history >
Where did Samuel Coleridge-Taylor study?

Raised in a family of keen musicians, Taylor's father taught him to play the violin at a young age.

The boy's talent and affinity towards music was obvious, so he was encouraged to join the Royal College of Music when he was just 15 years old and it was here that he perfected his technique.

Soon enough, Taylor began writing compositions under the guidance of professor Charles Stanford and after completing his degree, his career as a composer went from strength to strength.
Read more: Who was George Bridgetower? The black violinist who fell out with Beethoven >

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, The Song of Hiawatha composer. Picture: Getty

Coleridge-Taylor - a life of music and poetry

The bright young composer made his musical debut with ' Ballade in A Minor ', for which he was called "a genius" by music publisher August Jaeger.

Conscious of his African descent, Taylor's classical compositions were heavily influenced by traditional African music and this made him one of the most progressive writers of his time.

He also became well-known for his use of poetry - particularly in his cantata trilogy, The Song of Hiawatha, which included the epic Hiawatha Overture and was based on a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Despite the black community's ongoing battle against racism, the first part of this work, Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, was so popular that it led him to embark on three tours of the United States.

In fact, his work across music and politics was so well received that in 1904, he was even invited by President Theodore Roosevelt to visit the White House - a bold statement and a positive step forward for African Americans.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's legacy

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor died of pneumonia on 1 September 1912 in Croydon, at the age of 37. Throughout his short life, he faced financial struggles and personal tragedy, which are both often linked to his early demise.

Some of Taylor's best-known works today include 'Nonet in F Minor', his extraordinary 'Christmas Overture' and 'Deep River' - a traditional African-American spiritual.

Written in 1904, 'Deep River' was originally arranged for the piano, but was recently reimagined by cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason with added violin and cello. The tribute is also Sheku's first recording with his brother and sister, Braimah and Isata, as part of the Kanneh-Mason Trio.

The siblings first heard the track while filming for a Chineke! Documentary and instantly fell in love with Taylor's melody.

Coinciding with National Freedom Day, the single was released in February 2019, 115 years after the song was first published, making Taylor's music just as relevant today as it was then.

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Who was Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the English composer referred to as 'Black Mahler'?

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This bright composer defied societal odds in the early 20th century, so here's everything you need to know about his life, music and love of poetry. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an English composer, conductor and political activist who fought against race prejudice with his incredible compositions.

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John Blanke - King Henry VIII Trumpeter 16th Century

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John Blanke - King Henry VIII Trumpeter 16th Century

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The next day, John would have taken part in the procession from the Tower of London to Westminster Great Hall. On this journey John would have viewed wonderful scenes of pageantry as the citizens of London welcomed their new monarch. The streets were lined with rich tapestries and cloth of gold, and the sound of triumphant music filled the air.

The coronation, on 25 June at Westminster Abbey, was followed by a lavish banquet and tournament.
Image: 16th-century woodcut of the coronation of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon showing their heraldic badges, the Tudor rose and the pomegranate. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. From Stephen Hawes, 'A Joyfull Medytacvon to All Englande' (1509), printed Wynkyn de Worde, 4to, n.d.

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The next day, John would have taken part in the procession from the Tower of London to Westminster Great Hall. On this journey John would have viewed wonderful scenes of pageantry as the citizens of London welcomed their new monarch. The streets were lined with rich tapestries and cloth of gold, and the sound of triumphant music filled the air.

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The South Wales Race Riots of 1919 Background 

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The South Wales Race Riots of 1919 Background 

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Early Times - Black Settlers in Tudor Times, Black Moors in Scotland, John Blanke, Elizabeth 1, Adventurers and Slavers

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Early Times - Black Settlers in Tudor Times, Black Moors in Scotland, John Blanke, Elizabeth 1, Adventurers and Slavers

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James Chappell was a black servant in the household of Christopher Hatton, the owner of Kirby Hall near the village of Gretton, Northamptonshire. His heroic actions after an explosion on Guernsey in 1672, and his later life in Gretton, were enshrined in family and local legend.

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Black people in late 18th-century Britain

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In October 1796, ships from the Caribbean carrying over 2,000 black and mixed-race prisoners of war docked at Portsmouth Harbour. Soon almost all of them were imprisoned at Portchester Castle. Their arrival must have aroused extraordinary interest in the area.

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October is Black History Month in the UK and has been celebrated for nearly 40 years.

When Mo Jannah moved to Cardiff from Birmingham 14 years ago he had expectations of what Wales would be like.

But what he did not expect to find was Butetown - "a vibrant multi-cultural community with deep roots" .

Here he explores how south Wales' industrial past attracted people from all over the globe to settle in the docklands of Cardiff leading to the creation of one of the UK's oldest multi-cultural communities.

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Butetown: The vibrant community with deep roots

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How Wales' industrial past led to one of the oldest multi-cultural communities in the UK.

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Amid violent clashes in the 1980s, Tiger Bay’s multi-ethnic community in Cardiff was different.

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Black miners played an integral role in the story of the Welsh coal industry, but it's a story that has rarely been told.

Historian Norma Gregory, who has been exploring the story of black miners across the UK, says she was initially told there had been none working in Welsh collieries.

But through a "very hard, long search", Ms Gregory believes about 200 black miners worked in the country from the 1800s onwards.

Former Wales international footballer Nathan Blake features in Wales' Black Miners, a documentary in which he searches for these forgotten men.

Mr Blake was shocked to discover how little he knew about the history of black miners and their work in the pits of south Wales.

"It's about understanding how we are in a minority, how black people have been made to accept racism as everyday life if they wanted to get on in life," he said.

"It's more in the background (now), but back in those days, it was prevalent everywhere. You couldn't leave the mine and go and work in the supermarket, because it was there as well."

Mr Blake said it is something black people face to this day, with the question "where are you from?" and the assumption "you have dark skin, you can't be British".

"I'm a very proud Welshman - wearing red for my country I've shown that Wales isn't made up of just one colour," he said.

"But I feel that black miners tell us more about a multi-cultural Wales than a black footballer."

Ms Gregory said she hopes the documentary will inspire black Welsh people to find more about the history of the country they call home.

"Hopefully it will give them inspiration to ask questions and not necessarily believe everything you read or are taught at school," she said.

"We are going through a global process of reassessing our history."

Mr Blake said he had since learned that his grandfather was a miner when he first moved to Cardiff from Africa.

As he attempts to track down the last surviving black miners, he travels to former pit villages and talks to former miners about their attitudes towards their black colleagues and the so-called "banter" they faced when they came to Wales.

Having experienced racism throughout his life, Mr Blake said he was able to relate to what it must have been like for black miners at the time.

"They had to accept it - there was no alternative," he said. "You couldn't just go to another job. Black people had to go through a lot to get acceptance. They had to just swallow it.

"That's the most powerful thing I will take take from it because I remember as a child I was in that same position.

"I can really relate to their experiences and I have a massive amount of respect for them."

Mr Blake meets the family of Idris Phillips, from Senghenydd, Caerphilly county, who died of Covid-19 during filming.

Mr Phillips went down the mine at 14 and, despite facing racism in his community, rose to a management position and was one of the coordinators of the rescue at the site of the Aberfan disaster.

His family explain how much he loved his job, how proud he was of mining and how he would say "we're all black underground".

Wales' Black Miners airs on BBC One Wales at 20:30 BST on Monday, 5 October, and BBC iPlayer shortly after.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

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Black miners in Wales: Ex-footballer explores little-known history

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Black miners played an integral role in the story of the Welsh coal industry, but it's a story that has rarely been told. Historian Norma Gregory, who has been exploring the story of black miners across the UK, says she was initially told there had been none working in Welsh collieries.

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The story of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, the African orphan who became the protégée of Queen Victoria, reads more like fiction than fact.

Born in West Africa, in what is now south-west Nigeria, she was captured as a child and held in captivity by the King of Dahomey before she was gifted to a British naval captain and taken to England. There, Queen Victoria took her under her wing, and by the time she reached adulthood she had taken her place in Victorian high society and become a celebrity - as well as part of the contemporary debate about race, slavery and empire.

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Sarah Forbes Bonetta, Queen Victoria's African Protégée

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The story of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, the African orphan who became the protégée of Queen Victoria, reads more like fiction than fact.

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David Olusoga explores the story of Mall Singh, one of thousands of Indian soldiers who fought for the Allied Powers in World War One.
Singh was taken prisoner by the German army, which made audio recordings of captured Indian soldiers as part of their study into ethnic differences.

While this recording was made for sinister purposes, it has become a valuable piece of historical evidence for making sense of the contribution of Empire troops to World War One.

This clip is from the series The World's War.

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History GCSE: Audio evidence from Empire Soldiers in World War One

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David Olusoga explores the story of Mall Singh, one of thousands of Indian soldiers who fought for the Allied Powers in World War One. Singh was taken prisoner by the German army, which made audio recordings of captured Indian soldiers as part of their study into ethnic differences.

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Historian Onyeka Nubia explores why some people are racist - and talks about his own experiences of racism.

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In 1948, Britain was just starting to recover from World War II. Thousands of buildings had been bombed, loads of houses were destroyed and it all needed to be rebuilt.

In the Caribbean, lots of young men and women had served in the British armed forces because, at the time, many Caribbean countries were still under British rule and not yet independent.

After the war, some of them answered an advert to come to Britain where there were lots of different jobs to do.  These people became known as the Windrush Generation, named after the ship that brought the first arrivals to the UK - the Empire Windrush.

To mark the 70th anniversary of that first journey, Maya and Levi head back to the Caribbean islands that their granddads left to see where they grew up and why they decided to start new lives in the UK.

They each had three missions to complete while they were there.

You can find out what Maya and Levi learned by watching Finding My Family - Windrush: A Newsround Special.

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Windrush - Finding My Family: A Newsround Special - CBBC Newsround

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In 1948, Britain was just starting to recover from World War II. Thousands of buildings had been bombed, loads of houses were destroyed and it all needed to be rebuilt. In the Caribbean, lots of young men and women had served in the British armed forces because, at the time, many Caribbean countries were still under British rule and not yet independent.

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How Racial Stereotypes Shape how we see the World

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How Racial Stereotypes Shape how we see the World

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How racial stereotypes shape how we see the world - BBC Ideas

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Watch the "How racial stereotypes shape how we see the world" video at BBC Ideas. Explore other related content via our curated "IMHO" playlist.

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BHM 2006 activities_Abolitionof slave trade

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Three women who share Kamala Harris’ mixed parentage open up about balancing the two sides of their lives.

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On 21 August 2018, the then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid announced that - after a review of 11,800 cases - 18 members of the Windrush generation who could have been wrongfully removed or detained would get a formal apology from the government.

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After World War Two, thousands of people moved to the UK from the Caribbean - and they were known as the Windrush generation.

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I remember the first time that I was stopped by police officers simply because of the colour of my skin. It was a dark winter night and I was in east London, driving Jermaine, my boyfriend at the time, home. I'd driven through the area a number of times, often in daylight, but this was my first time driving there at night.

We had almost reached his house when I noticed a police van following closely in my rear-view mirror. "Why is this van so close? We're in a 30 zone!" Jermaine turned his head and looked behind us. He nudged my arm: "Erm, Alex, I think the police are tailing you. You might want to pull over."

I checked that my lights were turned on and that my speed wasn't exceeding the limit. All was fine, I told myself. Flickers of blue light bounced around the car. I looked up again at my mirror. The van seemed to be getting closer. We were approaching our turn and I slowed my car to steer left. I pulled into the road and found a parking space.

The police van did not pull in behind us but stopped next to me in the middle of the road. The lights continued to flash and a number of officers got out of the van and surrounded my car. My heart started to beat wildly. I switched off the engine. A police officer approached and motioned for me to wind down the window. I did so obediently and tried to sit on my hands, which were shaking uncontrollably. The officer lowered his head and lent forward into my car so that his face was just centimetres from mine. He asked why I was in the area and I explained that I was dropping off my boyfriend. Jermaine chimed in and pointed out his flat to the officer. The officer didn't look up, he remained focused on me.

The officer asked for my name. I could see the other officers still surrounding my car. I was petrified. He asked whether I had been drinking or had taken any drugs. I of course shook my head and tried to hold back the tears. I knew I hadn't done anything wrong, but I couldn't control my fear. The officer asked whether I would be willing to take a breathalyser test and I nodded.

He took a few steps away from my car and made some notes. He seemed to confer with a colleague briefly, and they both looked up and stared at me for what felt like a few minutes. He approached the car again and asked how long I had held my licence. "I think two months and a few days," I replied shakily.

I watched him converse with the officers surrounding my car but I couldn't make out what they were saying. I glanced at Jermaine, who was sitting there tapping his fingers. He looked back at me: "See what I mean now? They just love wasting our time." I ignored the comment and looked back at the officer, who now seemed more relaxed. The other officers were retreating from my car and were climbing back into the van. The main officer returned to my window: "That will be all. Drive safely."

They switched the flashing lights off and drove away. It was the first time that I understood what it felt like to be criminalised. I will never forget it.

The same feeling has returned on a number of occasions in my work as a criminal barrister. I made international headlines one afternoon in the summer of 2020, when I tweeted about my experience of being mistaken for a defendant in a magistrates' court multiple times in one day.

The day had begun like any other , though I hadn't visited this particular court before. My client was there for a driving offence. We didn't need long to discuss the case because she had accepted most of the charges. I hoped that a short discussion with whoever was prosecuting that day would mean that she would be able to plead guilty to some of the charges, have the others withdrawn, be sentenced and thus be able to move on with her life.

'Many of my clients are terrified on their day in court and being shouted at must exacerbate their fears.' Photograph: Richard Chivers/Alamy

I was wearing a new suit that morning, which felt appropriate for a new court. I was keen to make a good impression. I walked in through the main door and stopped shortly before the security scanner. I looked up and smiled at the officer, who was holding a clipboard with sheets of paper. He glanced at me and then back at the paper. He looked up again: "Could you please tell me your name so that I can mark you as here for your case?"

I looked over at the piece of paper, which contained a list of all of the defendants due to appear in court. "I'm not a defendant. I am a barrister, here to represent a client," I replied.

I was the only person being treated like this. There were male and female lawyers. I was the only black lawyer

The security officer lowered his clipboard and apologised. He ushered me through the scanner. I felt a little flustered as I went upstairs to meet my client. I put it out of my mind and met with my client. As I had expected, she accepted the bulk of what was alleged and so I explained how I hoped we could progress the case. I headed out of the conference to ask the prosecutor whether he would be willing to accept her pleading guilty to some but not all of the offences charged.

From the courtroom door, I could see that the magistrates' chairs were empty, suggesting that now was an appropriate time to step in to speak to the prosecutor. "No. You mustn't go in there!" a member of the public shouted out at me from across the hall. I narrowed my eyebrows in confusion. "Only lawyers must go into the courtroom, not journalists!"

I looked down at my new black suit. My loafers were polished and my black leather handbag matched. I was clutching my notebook and my bag was peeping out of my laptop. I couldn't think of anything that could make me look more lawyer-like. I turned again to see the court usher standing behind me and holding the door to the courtroom open. She whispered that I should ignore the woman's warning and should head on into the courtroom. I smiled appreciatively. I could see the grey-haired prosecutor leaning over his desk, presumably tapping away at his laptop. Followed closely by the usher, I stepped into the courtroom. "You need to wait outside and sign in with the usher."

The voice came from a woman sitting on the bench beside me. She was similarly dressed to me, clad in a black suit, and had a laptop in front of her. She was clearly another legal representative. I remained where I was and she continued: "The usher will come outside and sign you in. The court will call you in for your case."

"I'm a barrister," I stuttered. "I'm here to represent a client." The woman's jaw dropped and her face flushed red. She looked embarrassed. "Oh, I see," she muttered under her breath.

I could feel a lump growing in my throat as I walked across the courtroom towards the prosecutor. What was it about my appearance that day that had made it so difficult to appreciate I was a lawyer? I took a deep breath and stepped towards the prosecutor. He was only about five metres away from me now. "You need to leave the courtroom!" a voice bellowed at me from the front. I lifted my gaze to see the court legal adviser on her feet and pointing at the door. She continued: "The usher will be out shortly."

I stared at her blankly, thinking surely she must be joking. "Are you represented today?" she inquired, looking at me with a concerned expression. I sighed in disbelief. I explained again that I was a defence barrister and I was just trying to speak to the prosecutor about my case. She looked me up and down and then took a seat. "Oh, right, OK," she said quietly. She, too, turned back to her computer and began tapping away.

I couldn't understand why she had shouted at me in that way. Even if I had been a defendant who had entered the courtroom too early, that did not justify being screamed at and ordered to leave immediately. Many of my clients are terrified on their day in court and being shouted at must exacerbate their fears. I was frustrated. I was the only person being treated like this. There were young and old people present, male and female lawyers. I was, of course, the only black lawyer.

While this hadn't happened so many times in one day before, it wasn't the first time I had been mistaken for a defendant and perhaps wouldn't be the last. Every black barrister or solicitor I know has experienced something similar, and we all know why: some court staff see black people as criminals before they even enter the courtroom.

I feel a growing sense of duty to change the system and I'm grateful to see there are other lawyers also working hard to change this dangerous narrative. Black people continue to be underrepresented in the legal profession and overrepresented as defendants. We are more likely to be stopped and searched, more likely to be arrested, more likely to receive a longer sentence and more likely to be sent to prison. While I see more young black lawyers, I rarely see black judges, and there are too few black QCs. Black people are underrepresented in the senior ranks of our profession and clients notice that.

Most of the lawyers I see tackling these issues head on are black lawyers, and it is important that we see the same efforts from our white counterparts too. Every individual is powerful enough to contribute to changing this. The first step is to educate yourself about racism. The second is committing to tackling racism wherever it is. That means that whenever we see instances of racial assumptions, microaggressions, bias, explicit racism, or any other form of racial prejudice, we exercise our duty to challenge it.

The third step is to try to build a more inclusive future. We all have skills to offer and need to ensure that the opportunities that we as individuals, or the organisations that we belong to, offer are available to a diverse range of people. If black people are underrepresented in your workplace, what are you doing about it? While it was a difficult year for most people, especially black people, 2020 has taught us something invaluable: remaining silent on racism is to be complicit. We all have a role to play in ending racism.

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'I'm not the defendant': the trials of a black barrister

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Alexandra Wilson made headlines when she was mistaken for a defendant three times in one day. But she remains determined to tackle racism in the courts

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Picasso is generally considered to have entered into his African Period in 1907 whilst working as a professional fine artist, building on from some initial proto-cubist experimental works that were produced during his Blue Period.

This overlapped with his transition into using "warmer" brown and red palette colors and his shift away from depicting depressing themes to a more neutral stance, both of which defined his Rose Period (c.1904-1907).

Picasso's work during these years is still generally considered to be proto-cubist, as it included some semi-realistic elements and geometry.

Picasso's interest in African (particularly African tribal) influences is usually considered something of a brief flirtation with subversive form that formed a stepping stone to his lifelong infatuation with depicting his own take on surrealist cubist geometries.

The work of Picasso during this period is also known to have influenced New York modern artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat.

His experiments with African themes are considered to have concluded by the start of 1910, in favour of focusing on developing his (then) more successful 1908 experiments in "Analytical Cubism" into a coherent genre of painting.

Nevertheless, Picasso never entirely abandoned his interest in Africa. Some much later work such as the painting Musician (1972) can be said to contain the same influences.

Certainly, the enduring influence of some elements of the African Period on Picasso can be seen throughout the work that followed on from it. This is particularly so in Picasso's approach to facial structure and depiction of the human body after 1909. One of his most highly regarded paintings, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), also emerged as an iconic masterwork from his exploration of tribal African depictions of the human form.

Importantly, this period also saw Picasso starting to produce portrait artwork that was not drawn directly from life models. This would form a significant part of his approach to Cubism and Surrealism.

Picasso's Interest in African Art

Picasso's brief but intense interest in African art arguably stems from the influence French colonialism had on the European bourgeois from 1899. After the French annexation of several states in sub-Saharan Africa (notably the kingdom of Dahomey in 1894), traditional African artwork began to filter into European museums. In particular, the masks, tools, and ornaments of the Fang and Dan peoples proved popular amongst European audiences.

By the end of 1906, Picasso had, by his own later admission, reached the boundaries of what he could do with classical portrait work. In an effort to perfect his classical style, he is said to have repainted his 1906 portrait of writer Gertrude Stein over eighty times.

Whilst looking for inspiration in early 1907, Picasso visited the Trocadéro Museum of Ethnology on a trip with his friend, the artist André Derain, after being inspired by an African sculpture shown to him by Henri Matisse at Gertrude Stein's Paris apartment.

It was here that he first saw a Fang depiction of a face, carved in wood. Picasso would later recount that he saw the connection between artwork and magic as a form of spirituality while visiting Trocadéro for the first time in his life.

Instead of depicting realistic scenes from an objective point of view, his new work would depict the innate links that humanity had at a primitive level to nature. Picasso claimed that this was present in traditional, crafted African art.

This was a novel approach to art at the time, as few others in Europe had drawn on anonymous influences from outside of the continent untrained in the European classical style. However, it was one that also partly built on the work of earlier European impressionists such as Monet and the then contemporary European avant-garde. Picasso aimed to depict power, spirit, and emotion through art, rather than achieve a purely faithful recreation of reality.

Picasso combined his two approaches to metamorphose themes in African art into something else.

He used them, mostly, to produce a new style of semi-realistic portraiture. Between 1907 and 1908, his work was overwhelmingly centered on producing abstract portraits of female nudes (particularly in groups), distorted heads, and more ambiguous humanoid figures.

As the period concluded, Picasso also began to apply his new technique to depictions of mundane scenes such as still life depictions of fruit and panoramic views of factories, fusing his African inspirations more with Cubism to create stark but colorful landscapes.

He also expanded this approach into some sculpture, but pieces in this medium from him made between 1906 and 1909 are far less common than the wealth of oil paintings that survive.

Despite this, Head of a Woman (Fernande) (1909) is sometimes considered to be one of his most important late-stage African period sculptures, if not one of the most important sculptures of his career. The stacked ridges and bold lines around the head represented a striking and radical departure from the neoclassical bust making that preoccupied nineteenth-century Europe.

Much of the artwork that Picasso produced during his African Period was purchased by the merchant S.I. Shchukin and shipped to from France to Russia to form part of an enormous collection of impressionist and post-impressionist art. Around 80 or so key pieces from this period still exist today, most of them taken from the 1914 Shchukin collection.

Some of his African work also briefly scandalised parts of the European art establishment, although not to the same degree as other avant-garde artists of the time. In particular, his deliberate geometric distortion of female faces was considered at the time by some critics to be a hateful act against the spirit of what art should be.

Picasso's African Period Style

Picasso's style of painting and drawing this period can be best described as one which features heavy emphasis on bold lines, warmer colours interspersed with blue tones, background and foreground blending (to the point of being indistinguishable), stilted motion in depictions of human figures, and drastic distortions of limbs and faces. The influence of facial masks can be seen in Picasso's frequent depiction of relatively detailed heads, placed in the midst of simple shapes.

Sharply etched lines and shading are also key features of the African Period, throwing his drawings of male and female heads into sharp relief, such as in the famous oil painting Head of a Sleeping Woman (1907). A contrast between a grey palette for buildings and a more colorful natural background is particularly noticeable in some later African period paintings, most obviously in the oil painting Factory in Horta de Sant Joan (1909).

The Legacy of Picasso's African Period

Picasso's African Period is not one of his more commonly discussed phases. In part, this can be put down to its relative brevity and experimental tone. Picasso also appeared unusually hesitant to discuss his African influences much while living, compared to his Cubist.

Nevertheless, his attempt at depicting of disjointed human form that still retained a sense of emotion and beauty helped, along with the African textile inspired work of Henri Matisse, to move the cutting edge of European painting away from a conventional neoclassical mode and sculpture away from Iberian archaic revivalism (Picasso's interest in this shared some similarities with his philosophy of African art).

The techniques he developed during 1906 to 1909 would be reused again throughout his career. Specifically his usage of harsh lines, shading, and contours, blending of grounds, and abstract figures would appear time and again. His masterpiece Guernica, particularly, owes a significant amount to the legacy of his African techniques. Parisian School post-impressionism would also build on (or copy) his African work to a great degree.

In particular, his later plasterwork sculpture Bust of a Woman (Marie-Thérèse) (1931) can be seen as a surrealist reinvention of his earlier African inspired techniques. Picasso's palette choices for painting in the decades that followed also deviated surprisingly little from the colors he first used during the African and Rose periods.

Picasso's African work also helped to contribute to an important social legacy, particularly in America. A 1923 exhibit in New York presented Picasso's work alongside the African art that inspired it. This exhibit helped to establish the idea of African work as an equal and valid influence for European and American artists. Alain Locke would later argue in 1925 that African-American artists should look to their own heritage for inspiration in much the same way.

The pioneering innovation of Picasso and Matisse thus helped to establish an important cornerstone of modern art, namely that it should transcend national and cultural boundaries.

After 1910, Picasso would also go on to become an insatiable personal collector of African art produced by tribal societies, more so as his wealth and fame grew. Observers noted that his studio space was still dominated by African Grebo and Nimba masks at the time of his death in 1973.

Opinions vary. But Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is commonly considered to be one of the greatest twentieth-century radical European surrealist and cubist painters and sculptors to have lived, if not the greatest modern artist that Spain has ever produced.

His prolific portfolio included experimentation in everything from printmaking to ceramics, although oil painting was for most of his career his primary medium. His extensive legacy in popular culture and fine art, particularly in abstract geometry and use of color, is extensive and incomparable to all but a few other titans of modern art.

He was identified as a child prodigy and was admitted at the age of just 14 to Barcelona's School of Fine Art. Over the following eight decades, Picasso consistently pushed against the classical conventions that had dominated nineteenth-century Spanish and European art to develop his own post-impressionist style. He would deliberately reinvent his approach to artform every few years until he died.

His early twentieth-century Blue, Cubist, and Surrealist Periods are probably his most well-known, although his post-1945 "naive" and "political" work is still well regarded. His work of all types frequently contained female nudes, distortions and contortions of the human face and frame, and cubist interpretations of buildings and rooms as key themes.

The most famous piece from his entire career is probably the painting Guernica (1937), an anti-war mixed media piece with both classical and abstract themes illustrating the human destruction and barbarism wrought by bombing in the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso's artwork still remains extremely popular worldwide with serious art collectors, although the Picasso market is dominated disproportionately by his paintings. In 2015, one version of his interpretation of Les Femmes d'Alger (1955) sold for a (then) record-breaking $179.4 million dollars at auction.

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Picasso is generally considered to have entered into his African Period in 1907 whilst working as a professional fine artist, building on from some initial proto-cubist experimental works that were produced during his Blue Period.

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In 1862, Sarah married a West African businessman, James Pinson Labulo Davies, and their wedding made headlines across England. "The press made a lot of her wedding in 1862 - but again, it was the curiosity value of two black people having a society wedding in Brighton which was an extraordinary event as far as the public were concerned," Rappaport says. "I really don't think we can say that she had any influence or significance in her own lifetime or even in the years after her death - bar the obvious 'curiosity value' of having been a captive sent as a gift to the Queen. Any 'influence' Sarah has is very retrospective and comes much later with the rediscovery of her story in the 1980s and 1990s."

Soon after marrying Davies, Sarah gave birth to her first child, and named her daughter Victoria, in honor of the Queen who agreed to serve as the girl's godmother. While there may not be any evidence of any direct correspondence between Davies and the Queen, Rappaport says the young girl was likely welcome to visit the royal residence on a regular basis.

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The gravestone of Sarah Forbes Bonetta at the English Cemetery in Funchal, Madeira, a Portuguese island in the Atlantic ocean, where she died.

Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

"It is suggested that Sarah did, however, visit Windsor regularly, upon invitation, and the Queen mentions seeing her once or twice in her journals, as well as Sarah's daughter Victoria who was the Queen's godchild." Rappaport emphasizes this point, and for good reason, as it is often misreported that Sarah was Queen Victoria's godchild, rather than Sarah's daughter, Victoria. "Sarah is said to have formed a friendship with Princess Alice, the queen's second daughter, but sadly there are no surviving letters or documents to confirm this. I personally would have so liked to prove this was the case."

Queen Victoria recorded Sarah's 1867 visit to England in her journal, writing, "Saw Sally, now Mrs. Davies & her dear little child, far blacker than herself, called Victoria & aged 4, a lively intelligent child, with big melancholy eyes." In 1880, Sarah died of tuberculosis at the age of 37, on the day Victoria had been expecting a visit from her godchild. The Queen wrote in her journal of the girl, "I shall give her an annuity," and she continued to pay for her education at Cheltenham Ladies College from 1881 to 1883.

"Sarah's story is clearly an inspiring and touching one, but we have to be careful about investing it with greater significance after the event than it had at the time," Rappaport says. "She died at the age of only 37, and after her marriage in 1862 and her departure for Sierra Leone, she was never mentioned again in the British press. The queen was fond of her, but bar the passing mention of Sarah and her daughter Victoria in her journals, Sarah did not figure in the queen's life and most biographies only make the most passing reference to her. Sarah sadly left no diaries and only a few letters written in the 1850s, so we don't know her full side of the story."

Originally Published: May 12, 2020

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How Sarah Forbes Bonetta Was 'Gifted' to Queen Victoria

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In 1862, Sarah married a West African businessman, James Pinson Labulo Davies, and their wedding made headlines across England. "The press made a lot of her wedding in 1862 - but again, it was the curiosity value of two black people having a society wedding in Brighton which was an extraordinary event as far as the public were concerned," Rappaport says.

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"Understandably, local residents, the artist and Unify Creative, who commissioned the project, are very upset by what has happened to this mural which represents Cardiff as a proud, welcoming and multi-cultural city."

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Cardiff's 'Mona Lisa' diversity mural vandalised

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"Understandably, local residents, the artist and Unify Creative, who commissioned the project, are very upset by what has happened to this mural which represents Cardiff as a proud, welcoming and multi-cultural city."

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Where is the Oldest Rock Art?

Painting and engraving traditions in Africa developed over the last 30,000 years into a highly sophisticated way of expressing complex beliefs about the supernatural world. The painted stones from Apollo 11 in Namibia date to roughly 27,500 years. However, there are no dates between Apollo 11 and the next oldest - around 10,000 years. It is estimated that the great majority of animal and human figures in southern African rock art were made within the last 7,000 years. The date for the art at Twyfelfontein is estimated to be around 5,000 years ago according to John Kinahan ('Spirit Rocks: the ancient art of /Ui-//aes' 2011) and the World Heritage dossier.

The oldest dated rock art in Africa was discovered in the Apollo 11 Cave in the Huns Mountains in south-western Namibia.

Seven grey-brown quartzite slabs, each smaller than an adult hand, were found with images drawn in charcoal and ochre during excavations in the cave in 1969 by German archaeologist W.E. Wendt. The discovery occurred at the time of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, and the shelter was given the same name to celebrate the momentous event. The stones, buried on the floor of the cave by layers of sediment and debris, were of a different rock from the cave walls and had been brought into the site by the people living there. Red and white paintings on the walls are in a different style and technique from those on the small slabs and are likely to be younger.

The painted stones were found in an archaeological layer with Middle Stone Age artefact. Three samples of charcoal and ostrich eggshell found in the same layer were radiocarbon dated to between 27,500 and 25,500 years BP (Wendt 1976). More recent excavations have confirmed the dating of this layer and its Middle Stone Age associations.

One of the decorated tablets had been broken before burial and the two pieces underwent different patination, as the image shows, before being recovered in separate excavation seasons. Drawn in charcoal, it resembles a feline, but with human hind legs. Images on other slabs could include a zebra because it has stripes (but the legs are unusually long), and a possible rhinoceros.

In 2002, news of an important discovery in Blombos Cave on the southern Cape coast was made; Chris Henshilwood announced the uncovering of a piece of ochre decorated with a delicate geometric pattern. He dated the piece conservatively at 77,000 years old. There are claims that it could be as much as 100,000 years old.

This has been supported by further discoveries by Chris Henshilwood in 2008. He and his team have uncovered what they believe is a 100,000-year-old paint workshop in Blombos Cave. The discovery indicates that, in terms of art, our ancestors had a basic knowledge of chemistry as well as the ability to plan.

The recovery of these toolkits adds evidence for early technological and behavioral developments. It demonstrates their deliberate planning, production, and curation of a pigmented compound and the use of containers. The research team found two sea snail shells - abalone shells - that probably served as containers to store a red concoction of ochre, bone and charcoal. Pigment residue on one of the bones suggests it was used for stirring and transferring the mixture out of the shell. There is evidence that this mixture had been heated; perhaps liquefied bone marrow was used as a paste. Urine or water was also probably added to make it more fluid.

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Where is the Oldest Rock Art? Painting and engraving traditions in Africa developed over the last 30,000 years into a highly sophisticated way of expressing complex beliefs about the supernatural world. The painted stones from Apollo 11 in Namibia date to roughly 27,500 years.

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British slave owners in the 1830's | History - Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners

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British slave owners in the 1830's | History - Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners

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The Movement for Justice and Reconciliation was established in 2015 to highlight and address the legacy of the colonial enslavement of Africans in the Caribbean and the resulting industrial exploitation which ensued from that. To do this, we have gathered a varied team of researchers, historians, theologians, archivists, and community organisers to get our message out to the public.

The current Coronavirus pandemic and the graphic racial injustices witnessed in America have exposed a deep, divisive malaise in the fabric of Western societies, whose foundational institutions have their roots in the 15th century. It was then that various Popes of Western Europe sanctioned the enslavement of Africans. In 1442 Pope Eugenius IV issued a papal decree or bull - Illius Qui, which approved of Prince Henry's slave trading expeditions to Africa and then gave Portugal sole rights over all its discoveries. His successor Pope Nicholas V issued another bull, Romanus Pontifex in January 1454 which gave formal support to Portugal's monopoly of trading in Africa. This included Africans, as well as the instruction to convert them to the Christian faith. This bull was read out in the Cathedral of Lisbon in both Latin and Portuguese. And, as one historian pointed out, it helped to establish the familiar Portuguese pattern of 'making money', 'saving' Africans from 'barbarism', and the excitement of voyages down the Guinea coast and raiding expeditions up the rivers. (Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: The story of the Atlantic Slave Trade:1440-1870. Touchstone books, 1997. Page 65).

This created a platform for White supremacy and the subsequent colonisation of the African and American continents by European nations. During colonisation, these European powers led by the Portuguese and the Spanish, created a system that categorised people. It was a hierarchy based upon the proportion of European blood they possessed and the hue of their complexion; a "pigmentocracy", where lighter-skinned people enjoyed higher social status. After centuries of implementation, this white hegemony is embedded in the psyche, philosophy, and institutional structures of many societies in Western Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Consequently, innumerable metrics demonstrate that Black and brown people in these societies are often marginalised, denigrated, dominated, and treated detrimentally.

A major part of the mission and mandate of the Movement for Justice and Reconciliation is to increase the consciousness of those still steeped in white hegemonic views by highlighting their origins. Our aim is to create a climate that fosters reconciliation by revealing the histories behind many of the divisions that are still evident in societies as a direct result of slavery and colonisation and provide tangible mechanisms to heal them.

A picture containing outdoor, person, person, fence

Description automatically generated As part of our ongoing efforts to achieve these aims, we have carried out research and delivered programmes since our inception. One of our projects is The Zong replica slave ship project.

We particularly want to draw this to the attention of the Black community, since an abhorrent incident aboard The Zong slave ship played a pivotal role in raising the awareness of the public to the fact that Black people were, in fact, human beings and not chattel.

During an Atlantic crossing in 1781, 132 people captured in Africa were thrown overboard from The Zong, drowning them, and claiming insurance money for them as loss of goods. The crew responsible for this misdeed were tried in 1783, although the case was heard as an insurance dispute, rather than a murder trial. Still, this seminal case changed public opinion about the transatlantic slave trade and highlighted the horrific experiences of African people at the hands of their captors.

The Zong case galvanised the abolitionists, whose efforts eventually brought about the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which abolished the transportation of slaves from Africa on British ships. The abolition of slavery itself would take another 31 years, as many parliamentarians, businessmen and clergymen had huge investment in the Caribbean Plantations and owned significant amounts of African Slaves.

The Movement for Justice and Reconciliation has the opportunity to purchase a ship which will be renamed The Zong. We intend to use this as a floating museum to educate people to the fact that racism is a legacy of the transatlantic slave trade and that white privilege and hegemony must cease.

The horrific events aboard the original Zong were used in the fight to abolish the slave trade and eventually slavery itself. Our intention is to use the replica slave ship to educate people that Black Lives Matter. The legal, political, and religious institutions of the past - whose mandates resulted in colourism, classism and racism which still exist today - must reconcile their role in the systemic inequity and work towards eliminating it.

A large majority of the descendants of the enslaved still suffer from Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome, which is expressed in myriad ways. (see http://www.mjr-uk.com/resources.html for articles relating to the Post-traumatic Slave Syndrome).

To address these maladies, we need to repair the damages of centuries of injustice. Only when this happens, can we repeat the line form the old negro spiritual, "free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I'm free at last."

The MJR would welcome donations by visiting their website www.mjr-uk.com and press the donate button.

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The ZONG Project "Addressing the legacy of colonial slavery and industrial exploitation"

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The Movement for Justice and Reconciliation was established in 2015 to highlight and address the legacy of the colonial enslavement of Africans in the Caribbean and the resulting industrial exploitation which ensued from that. To do this, we have gathered a varied team of researchers, historians, theologians, archivists, and community organisers to get our message out to the public.

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Ottobah Cugoano, also known as John Stuart (c.1757 - after 1791), was an African abolitionist who was active in England in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Captured and sold into slavery at the age of 13 in present-day Ghana, he was shipped to Grenada.

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By the fifteenth century, Africa was home to hundreds of vibrant, dynamic cultures populating all parts of the vast continent. Within those regions we today call West or Central Africa, for example, diverse groups distinguished themselves from one another through a complex range and combination of languages, religions, arts, technologies, and evolving worldviews.

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Introduction

"Before King dreamed, before Thurgood Marshall petitioned and Sidney Poitier emoted, before the big breakthroughs in Hollywood and Washington, before the Jim Crow signs came down and before the Civil Rights banners went up, before Spike Lee, before Denzel, before Sam Jackson and Jesse Jackson, there was Paul Robeson."

Lerone Bennett Jnr., 1998

"There is no place in the world I like more than Wales."

Paul Robeson

Western Mail 24 February 1949

Anti-segregation March, 1948

Created by the South Wales Miners' Library

Copyright: Prifysgol Abertawe - Swansea University | Accessibility | Hosted by the Digital Humanities Team

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Introduction · Swansea University Digital Collections

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Introduction "Before King dreamed, before Thurgood Marshall petitioned and Sidney Poitier emoted, before the big breakthroughs in Hollywood and Washington, before the Jim Crow signs came down and before the Civil Rights banners went up, before Spike Lee, before Denzel, before Sam Jackson and Jesse Jackson, there was Paul Robeson."

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aul Robeson possessed one of the most beautiful voices of the 20th century. He was an acclaimed stage actor. He could sing in more than 20 different languages; he held a law degree; he won prizes for oratory. He was widely acknowledged as the greatest American footballer of his generation. But he was also a political activist, who, in the 1930s and 1940s, exerted an influence comparable to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in a later era.

The son of an escaped slave, Robeson built his career despite the segregation of the Jim Crow laws - basically, an American apartheid system that controlled every aspect of African American life. He came to London with his wife Eslanda - known as Essie - partly to escape the crushing racism of his homeland. Yet later in life he always insisted that he became a radical as much because of his experiences in Britain as in America. In particular, he developed a deep bond with the labour movement - particularly with the miners of Wales. That was why, in 2016, I travelled from my home in Australia to visit the landscape that shaped Robeson's politics.

Pontypridd was a village carved out of stone. Grey terraced cottages, grey cobbled streets, and an ancient grey bridge arching across the River Taff.

The sky was slate, too, a stark contrast with the surrounding hills, which were streaked with seasonal russet, teal and laurel.

I was accustomed to towns that sprawled, as white settlers stretched themselves out to occupy a newly colonised land. Pontypridd, I realised, huddled. Its pubs and churches and old-fashioned stores were clutched tightly in the valley, in a cosy snugness that left me feeling a long way from home. I'd come here to see Beverley Humphreys, a singer and the host of Beverley's World of Music on BBC Wales.

"I have a strong feeling that we might meet in October!" she'd written, when I'd emailed her about the Paul Robeson exhibition she was organising. "I know from personal experience that once you start delving into Paul Robeson's life, he just won't leave you alone."

In that correspondence, she'd described Pontypridd as the ideal place to grasp Paul's rich relationship with Wales and its people. I knew that, in the winter of 1929, Paul had been returning from a matinee performance of Show Boat [in London] when he heard male voices wafting from the street. He stopped, startled by the perfect harmonisation and then by the realisation that the singers, when they came into view, were working men, carrying protest banners as they sang.

By accident, he'd encountered a party of Welsh miners from the Rhondda valley. They were stragglers from the great working-class army routed during what the poet Idris Davies called the "summer of soups and speeches" - the general strike of 1926. Blacklisted by their employers after the unions' defeat, they had walked all the way to London searching for ways to feed their families. By then, Robeson's stardom and wealth were sufficient to insulate him from the immiseration facing many British workers, as the industrialised world sank into the economic downturn known as the Great Depression.

Yet he remembered his father's dependence on charity, and he was temperamentally sympathetic to the underdog. Without hesitation, he joined the march.

Some 50 years later, [his son] Pauli Robeson visited the Talygarn Miners' Rehabilitation Centre and met an elderly man who'd been present on that day in 1929. The old miner talked of how stunned the marchers had been when Robeson attached himself to their procession: a huge African American stranger in formal attire incongruous next to the half-starved Welshmen in their rough-hewn clothes and mining boots.

But Robeson had a talent for friendship, and the men were grateful for his support. He had remained with the protest until they stopped outside a city building, and then he leaped on to the stone steps to sing Ol' Man River and a selection of spirituals chosen to entertain his new comrades but also because sorrow songs, with their blend of pain and hope, expressed emotions that he thought desperate men far from home might be feeling.

Afterwards, he gave a donation so the miners could ride the train back to Wales, in a carriage crammed with clothing and food.

That was how it began. Before the year was out, he'd contributed the proceeds of a concert to the Welsh miners' relief fund; on his subsequent tour, he sang for the men and their families in Cardiff, Neath, and Aberdare, and visited the Talygarn miners' rest home in Pontyclun.

From then on, his ties with Wales only grew.

Robeson remained [living] in Buckingham Street, London. He and Essie maintained a public profile as a celebrity couple, still mixing easily with polite society and the intelligentsia. But Robeson was now aware of the labour movement, and began to pay attention to its victories and defeats. His frequent visits to mining towns in Wales were part of that newfound political orientation.

"You can see why he's remembered around here," Humphreys said. "He was so famous when he made those connections, and the Welsh mining community was so very cowed. In the wake of the general strike, people felt pretty hopeless."

A Robeson exhibition opened in Pontypridd in October 2015 and was an echo of a much grander presentation from 2001, which Humphreys had assembled with Hywel Francis, then Labour MP for Aberavon, and Paul Robeson Jr [Robeson's son died in 2014]. It was first shown at the National Museum in Cardiff and then toured the country.

Staging that event had been a revelation for Humphreys. She'd known that memories of Robeson ran deep in Wales, but she'd still been astonished by the response. Every day of the exhibit, people shared their recollections, speaking with a hushed fervour about encounters with Paul that had stayed with them for ever.

Paul's interactions with Wales were shaped by the violence of mining life: the everyday hardship of long hours and low wages, but also the sudden spectacular catastrophes that decimated communities. In 1934, he'd been performing in Caernarfon when news arrived of a disaster in the Gresford colliery. The mine there had caught fire, creating an inferno so intense that most of the 266 men who died underground, in darkness and smoke, were never brought to the surface for burial. At once, Robeson offered his fees for the Caernarfon concert to the fund established for the orphans and children of the dead - an important donation materially, but far more meaningful as a moral and political gesture.

That was part, Humphreys said, of why Wales remembered him. He was by then among the most famous stars of the day, the recording artist whose songs many hummed, and yet he was showing an impoverished and struggling community - people who felt themselves isolated and abandoned - that he cared deeply about them.

And the continuing affection for Robeson was more than a recollection of generosity. "The Welsh sensed the relationship was reciprocal, said Humphreys. "That he was deriving something from their friendships, from seeing how people in the mining communities supported one another and cared for one another. He later said he learned more from the white working class in Wales than from anyone.".

Certainly, Robeson discovered Wales - and the British working class in general - at just the right time. He'd signed up, with great hopes, for a film version of [Eugene O'Neill's play] The Emperor Jones in 1933 - the first commercial film with a black man in the lead. But the process played out according to a familiar and dispiriting pattern. Robeson's contract stipulated that, during his return to America, he wouldn't be asked to film in Jim Crow states. Star or not, it was impossible to be shielded from institutional racism. At the end of his stay, as he arrived at a swanky New York function, he was directed to the servants' entrance rather than the elevator. One witness said he had to be dissuaded from punching out the doorman, in a manifestation of anger he'd never have revealed in the past.

The Emperor Jones itself was still very much shaped by conservative sensibilities: among other humiliations, the studio darkened the skin of his co-star, lest audiences thought Robeson was kissing a white woman. Not surprisingly, while white critics loved the film and Robeson's performance, he was again attacked in the African American press for presenting a demeaning stereotype.

A few years earlier, he might have found refuge in London from the impossible dilemmas confronting a black artist in America. But he'd learned to see respectable England as disconcertingly similar, albeit with its prejudices expressed through nicely graduated hierarchies of social class. To friends, he spoke of his dismay at how the British upper orders related to those below them. He was ready, both intellectually and emotionally, for the encounter with the Welsh labour movement.

"There was just something," Humphreys said, "that drew Welsh people and Paul Robeson together. I think it was like a love affair, in a way." And that seemed entirely right.

The next morning, Humphreys and I walked down the hill, beneath a sky that warned constantly of rain. We made our way to St David's Uniting Church on Gelliwastad Road. From the outside, it seemed like a typically stern embodiment of Victorian religiosity: a grey, rather grim legacy of the 1880s.

Inside, though, the traditional church interior - the pews, the pulpit, the altar - was supplemented by a huge banner from the Abercrave lodge of the National Union of Mineworkers, hanging just below the stained-glass windows. Workers of the world unite for peace and socialism, it proclaimed, with an image of a black miner holding a lamp out to his white comrade in front of a globe of the world.

The walls held huge photos of Paul Robeson: in his football helmet on the field at Rutgers [University]; on a concert stage, his mouth open in song; marching on a picket line. These were the displays extracted from the 2001 exhibition.

We chatted with parishioners, who were taking turns to keep the Robeson display open during the day for black history month.

The service itself reminded me of my morning in the Witherspoon Street church, except that, while in Princeton [where Robeson was born] I'd marvelled at the worshippers' command of the black vocal tradition, here I was confronted by the harmonic power of Welsh choristers: the old hymns voiced in a great wall of sound resonating and reverberating throughout the interior.

Robeson, of course, had made that comparison many times. Both the Wesleyan chapels of the Welsh miners and the churches in which he'd worshipped with his father were, he said, places where a weary and oppressed people drew succour from prayer and song.

His movie The Proud Valley (released as The Tunnel in the US), which had brought him to Pontypridd in 1939, rested on precisely that conceit. In the film (the only one of his movies in which he took much pride), Robeson played David Goliath, an unemployed seaman who wanders into the Welsh valley and is embraced by the miners when the choir leader hears him sing.

Throughout the 1930s, the analogy between African Americans and workers in Britain (and especially Wales) helped reorient Robeson, both aesthetically and politically, after his disillusionment with the English establishment.

His contact with working-class communities in Britain provided him with an important reassurance. He told his friend Marie Seton about a letter he received from a cotton-spinner during one of his tours. "This man said he understood my singing, for while my father was working as a slave, his own father was working as a wage slave in the mills of Manchester."

That was in northern England, but he experienced a similar commonality everywhere, and it pleased and intrigued him. If the slave songs of the US were worth celebrating, what about the music emerging from other oppressed communities? What connections might the exploration of distinctive cultural traditions forge between different peoples?

Significantly, it was in Wales where Robeson first articulated this new perspective. In 1934, he gave a concert in Wrexham, in north Wales, between the Welsh mountains and the lower Dee valley alongside the border with England. Yet again it was a charity performance, staged at the Majestic Cinema for the benefit of the St John Ambulance Association.

During the visit, Robeson was interviewed by the local paper, and he told the writer he was no longer wedded to a classical repertoire. He'd come to regard himself as a folk singer, devoted to what he called "the eternal music of common humanity". To that end, he was studying languages, working his way haphazardly through Russian, German, French, Dutch, Hungarian, Turkish, Hebrew, and sundry other tongues so as to perform the songs of different cultures in the tongues in which they had been written. He had become, he said, a singer for the people.

The confidence of that statement reflected another lesson drawn primarily from Wales. In African American life, the black church had mattered so much because religion provided almost the only institutional stability for people buffeted by racial oppression. In particular, because Jim Crow segregated the workplace, black communities struggled to form and maintain trade unions. Wales, though, was different. The miners found consolation in religion, with every village dotted with chapels. But they believed just as fervently in trade unionism.

The Gresford disaster showed why. In an industry such as mining, you relied on your workmates - both to get the job done safely and to stand up for your rights. The battle was necessarily collective. A single miner possessed no power at all; the miners as a whole, however, could shut down the entire nation, as they'd demonstrated in 1926.

In particular, the cooperation mandated by modern industry might, at least in theory, break down the prejudices that divided workers - even, perhaps, the stigma attached to race. That was the point Robeson dramatised in The Proud Valley, a film in which the solidarity of the workplace overcomes the miners' suspicion about a dark-skinned stranger. "Aren't we all black down that pit?" asks one of the men.

"It's from the miners in Wales," Robeson explained, "[that] I first understood the struggle of Negro and white together."

"To understand Paul's relationship with Wales," Humphreys told me the following day, "you need to understand Tiger Bay."

She introduced me to Lesley Clarke and to Harry Ernest and his son Ian. The three of them came from Tiger Bay, the centre of Wales's black community. They'd worked on the original exhibition in Cardiff, after Humphreys had insisted that the National Gallery employ black guides, and now they'd come to Pontypridd to witness the new display.

At 82, Lesley Clarke was thin but sprightly and alert. She spoke slowly and carefully. "I hadn't realised there was a colour bar until I left Tiger Bay. When I went to grammar school, I realised for the first time that there were people who just didn't like coloured people. Didn't know anything about us, but didn't like us. I didn't know I was poor and I didn't know I was black: all I knew was that I was me."

Tiger Bay was forged by some of the worst racial attacks in British history. In June 1919, returning soldiers encountered a group of black men walking with white women. Outraged, the troops, led by colonials (mostly Australians), rampaged throughout Butetown, attacking people of colour, destroying houses, and leaving four dead.

For Clarke and Ernest's generation, the colour bar was very real, especially in employment. Ernest was impish and bald, and his eyes crinkled as he spoke, almost as if he took a perverse humour in the recollection. "We'd ask if a job was open," he said, "and soon as they said yes, we'd say, 'Can I come for an interview right now?' To narrow the gap, because the minute you got there they would say, 'Oh, the job is gone.'"

"The minute they saw you were black, that was it," said Clarke. "You just took it for granted that it was going to happen. There were very few outlets, especially for girls. You either worked in the brush factory or you worked in Ziggy's, selling rags and whatnot, or there was a place just over the bridge that did uniforms."

"I worked in the brush factory for a while," Ernest said. "Oh, Jesus!"

He shook his head and laughed in dismay. "Jesus."

Robeson had reached out to the Welsh miners when his career was at its height. They came back to him at his lowest ebb, almost two decades later, at a time when all he'd achieved seemed to have been taken from him. In the midst of the cold war, the FBI prevented Robeson from performing at home. [He'd proclaimed his sympathy for the Soviet Union ever since the mid-30s. That leftism now made him a target. He became, in Pete Seeger's words, "the most blacklisted performer in America", effectively silenced in his home country,] Worse still, the US state department confiscated his passport, so he could not travel abroad. He was left in a kind of limbo: silenced, isolated, and increasingly despairing.

On 5 October 1957, the Porthcawl Grand Pavilion filled with perhaps 5,000 people for the miners' eisteddfod. Will Painter, the union leader, took to the microphone. After welcoming the delegates, he announced that they would soon hear from Paul Robeson, who'd be joining them via a transatlantic telephone line.

When Painter spoke again, he was addressing Robeson directly. "We are happy that it has been possible for us to arrange that you speak and sing to us today," he said. "We would be far happier if you were with us in person."

Miraculously, Robeson's deep voice crackled out of the speakers in response. "My warmest greetings to the people of my beloved Wales, and a special hello to the miners of south Wales at your great festival. It is a privilege to be participating in this historic festival."

He was seated in a studio in New York. Down the telephone line, he performed a selection of his songs, dedicating them to their joint struggle for what he called "a world where we can live abundant and dignified lives".

The musical reply came from the mighty Treorchy Male Choir, the winners of that year's eisteddfod, and a group that traces its history back to 1883. Robeson joined the choir in a performance of the Welsh national anthem, Land of My Fathers, before the entire audience - all 5,000 of them - serenaded him with We'll Keep a Welcome. "This land you knew will still be singing," they chorused. "When you come home again to Wales."

This is an edited extract from No Way But This by Jeff Sparrow, published by Scribe (£14.99). To order a copy for £12.74 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99

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How Paul Robeson found his political voice in the Welsh valleys

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aul Robeson possessed one of the most beautiful voices of the 20th century. He was an acclaimed stage actor. He could sing in more than 20 different languages; he held a law degree; he won prizes for oratory. He was widely acknowledged as the greatest American footballer of his generation.

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THE PROUD VALLEY -  David Harewood on Paul Robeson

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Painting Memories, retelling History - Jack Sullivan's paintings of Cardiff Merchant Navy men and the 2nd WW

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Alt History: Black British History We’re Not Taught in Schools - BBC Stories

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Watch the "Orientalism: When will we stop stereotyping people?" video at BBC Ideas. Explore other related content via our curated "An A-Z of -isms" playlist.

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Her book, My Story: Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, for nine to 13-year-olds, has been launched at Ancient House museum in Thetford, Norfolk, which was founded by Sophia's brother, Frederick Duleep Singh, in 1921.

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Princess Sophia Duleep Singh - British Library

Born: 1876

Died: 1948

Occupation: socialite, nurse and campaigner

Claims to fame: involvement in 'Black Friday', high social class and background, tendency towards militant activity

Her background

Sophia's father was the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire in India and she was born a princess. British rule in India meant that her family had handed their lands over to the British, and Sophia was born in the UK. Financially, the family suffered and Sophia's godmother, Queen Victoria, provided her with support and a home at Hampton Court. Sophia studied chemistry at university, becoming a socialite, but a trip to India and witnessing the poverty there made her politically active.

As a suffragist

In 1909, Sophia joined the WSPU and became an active member. She took part in the physical scuffles on 'Black Friday' in 1910, when the police were violent towards suffrage protestors. She joined the Women's Tax Resistance League and sold her possessions to friends and family so that they couldn't be seized for tax payment. She spoiled her 1911 census and famously sold The Suffragette newspaper outside Hampton Court Palace where she lived. King George V was encouraged to remove her from the Palace to stop her campaigning. Sophia was arrested for taking part in physical and violent protests, but never sent to prison because of her status and name. She became a Red Cross nurse during the First World War, tending to the British Indian troops at hospital in Brighton. Afterwards, she continued working for women's rights. Her sister, Catherine Duleep Singh, belonged to the law-abiding NUWSS. Other Asian women who supported the Votes for Women campaign included Lolita Roy and Bhagwati Bhola Nauth.

Glossary

Maharaja of the Sikh Empire - the ruler of an independent area of India before the creation of British India

Socialite - a person, usually of high social class, who is famous for going to a lot of parties and social events and is well known because of this

Questions

1. Why was it that Sophia had an education, but still became a socialite?

2. Why was King George V angry with her?

3. Do you think high profile women like Sophia helped or hindered the suffrage cause?

Useful resources

Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: a reference guide, 1866-1928 (Routledge, 1999)

Anita Anand, Sophia: princess, suffragette, revolutionary (2015)

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Skip to main content If you are not already registered you can sign up for FREE website access to download the full resource. Princess Sophia Duleep Singh - British Library Born: 1876 Died: 1948 Occupation: socialite, nurse and campaigner Claims to fame: involvement in 'Black Friday', high social class and background, tendency towards militant activity Sophia's father was the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire in India and she was born a princess.

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From his father being mauled to death by a lion, to his abandonment, to representing his country and then ultimately being banned by his sport, the life of Jimmy Peters was nothing short of remarkable.

As the first black man to play rugby union for England, between 1906 and 1908, he was a pioneer.

But Peters - known as "Darkie" by followers of the game in what were less enlightened times - was hardly a trailblazer. It was 80 years before a black player would wear the red rose again.

How did the son of a Jamaican circus showman overcome tragedy, disadvantage and prejudice to became the only black player in the first 117 years of England's international rugby union history?

From early-life tragedy to Fegan's Orphanage

Born in Salford in 1879, the first child of a black father and a white mother, Peters' early life saw the family moving around with a travelling zoo, but by the time his third sibling was born in 1886, his father George - a lion tamer with Cedric's Menagerie - had been killed by a lion while performing.

Peters was then moved to another circus to entertain as a bareback rider, but was abandoned when he broke his arm in an accident and was no longer able to perform.

Left tied to a wagon, he was found and cared for by Lord and Lady Portman, who came from one of the richest families in Britain in the late 19th Century.

The Portmans sent him to Fegan's Orphanage in London in November 1890, where boys were taught printing, carpentry, shoemaking, tailoring and - crucially - sports.

It was there that Peters would learn the game of rugby and play matches at the nearby Blackheath FC, before leaving the orphanage in September 1898.

Coverage: Full commentary on every game across BBC Radio 5 Live and Radio 5 Live Sports Extra, plus text updates on the BBC Sport website and app.

'The organiser, the general' - Peters' rugby career blossoms

Peters took a job as a carpenter back in Bristol, living in St Phillip's Marsh, where he was reunited with his family, and he soon began playing rugby for the city's club.

"He was quite an athletic player, with a sharp, fast pass. He was a very good ball-handler," Bristol Rugby historian Mark Hoskins told BBC Radio Bristol.

After representing Bristol 35 times over two seasons, Peters left the city in 1902 and moved to Plymouth.

"He was a half-back so nowadays we would describe him as a fly-half or a scrum-half, but those positions hadn't been ascribed yet," rugby historian Tom Weir said. "He was one of the smaller players on the pitch."

Author and historian Tony Collins added: "He was seen as the fulcrum around which the teams he played in revolved. He was the organiser, the general."

County Championship success followed with Devon in 1906, and he made his historic England debut against Scotland soon afterwards on 17 March.

Many commentators felt his call-up should have come sooner, with the Western Times saying on 5 February that year it was a "pity" he had been overlooked for a meeting with Wales and that "colour was the difficulty" in the matter and he had been "sacrificed".

Controversy, injury and a ban

Four more caps would follow before his final England game at Ashton Gate in Bristol in 1908, against Wales, but not before reports of racism during the visit of a touring South Africa side, who were said to be unhappy to play against a black man when they faced Devon.

Peters was dropped by the Rugby Football Union for England's match against the tourists and not even selected among the top six half-backs for the national trials just months later.

He did eventually make two further England appearances after that tour, and carried on playing for Devon and Plymouth until he badly injured his fingers in a workplace accident.

He was subsequently given a testimonial by Plymouth, but this was seen as an act of professionalism that was against the RFU's amateur regulations at that time, so he was banned from the sport.

Peters' injuries would prove not to be as bad as first feared, but his ban meant he was unable to return to rugby union, so he accepted an offer from rugby league team Barrow for 18 months, before joining St Helens in 1914.

But the outbreak of World War One meant Peters could not play for Saints, as he was recalled to work in Plymouth's naval dockyard. He would eventually marry and start a family in Plymouth, being described as a "gentleman" teetotal publican who would often quote Bible passages. He died in 1954 aged 74.

It was 80 years after Peters' final cap before another black man played for England, when Chris Oti appeared in a 9-6 win over Scotland in 1988 (he scored a hat-trick against Ireland in his next game) - something that has been described as a "lost opportunity" for English rugby.

England fans will hope the current squad of 31 - which features 10 BAME players - can take inspiration from Peters at the World Cup in Japan.
Listen to the full documentary with John Inverdale on BBC Radio Bristol from 18:00 BST on Tuesday, 24 September, and for up to 30 days afterwards on BBC Sounds. Researched and produced by BBC Radio Bristol's Tom Ryan.

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The orphan who became England's first black rugby star

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From his father being mauled to death by a lion, to his abandonment, to representing his country and then ultimately being banned by his sport, the life of Jimmy Peters was nothing short of remarkable. As the first black man to play rugby union for England, between 1906 and 1908, he was a pioneer.

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After all, it isn't about money or glamour. It certainly isn't about trophies or medals. For Ifeoma Dieke, it was a conclusion sourced straight from the soul.

"It's all about what you want to do with your heart, I followed mine and it led me to Scotland. I've never regretted it," she says with a smile.

In hindsight, it was the right call. Dieke will go down as an icon of women's football in this country. She was capped 123 times, was part of the squad that qualified for their first tournament at the 2017 European Championships, and became the first black women to captain the nation.

However, it all could have been so different for the American-born defender with Nigerian parents, who was brought up in the Lanarkshire town of Cumbernauld and also - for a time - in Norwich.

With that backdrop, the strong Caledonian connection is not obvious, especially given she had the chance to be part of a star-studded United States set up. But in 2004, the irresistible lure of the land she calls home was overpowering.

"I was going over to California for two weeks to go train with the US national team," Dieke tells the 'Chris Iwelumo Meets' podcast. "They explained to me the bonus system, the win system, all this stuff. But that's not the reason why I'm going to go play for a country.

"It came to me that I might have been born in America, but I don't feel American. I grew up in Scotland, I just feel that everything about me is Scottish."

'Mum said there was no job for me in football'

Dieke is a real-life Gregory's Girl. In 1981 - the year she was born - a Scottish movie of that name was filmed in Cumbernauld, depicting a school girl who starred in her school team.

It wasn't until she moved back there from Norwich during her primary school years that her own footballing love affair sparked, a young Ifeoma and two friends eventually plucking up the courage to ask to play with the boys in the St Mary's playground, dreaming of wearing a Brazil shirt "while playing cuppy".

A few years later, the opportunity to play and study in Miami appeared. Academia was the focal point from her parents, Dieke explains. But it wasn't the first thing on her mind.

"My dad has a PhD. He's very well educated, just like my mum," she says.

"[The coach] said football and Miami and that's all I heard. I was excited. I went home and told my mum and dad. First thing they asked was 'what's the school like?' Typical. I didn't know anything about the school, I just heard Miami, football, America, test yourself among the best."

When on a scholarship at Florida International University, Dieke flourished and a professional contract offer from Atlanta Beat soon arrived. It was the chance to prove her mum wrong for which she had been waiting.

"I remember that day so clearly. My mum always said to me that this was just a hobby - there's no job for me in football. So I remember when I phoned my mum, I said: 'Remember all those times growing up you said I couldn't make a living out of it?' We just laughed."

Hitting a century & that wow feeling

The call to play for Scotland would arrive in 2004 as Dieke adjusted to life not as a player, but during a spell as a coach, after Atlanta's league folded at the end of her first season.

Her debut came in January of that year against Greece, with the caps following over the next 13 years.

For the 39-year-old, there are so many highlights - representing Great Britain at the London Olympics in 2012, qualifying for the Euros, earning her 100th cap - but one in particular still resonates.

"Being the first female black player to captain Scotland," she says. "I remember getting the armband and, after the game, Gemma Fay [former Scotland goalkeeper and captain] saying 'You're the first black player to captain Scotland'.

"That night it was, just, wow. Even now just thinking about it I'm just lost for words because I never thought about my skin colour or things like that.

"Captaining any team is fine, but Scotland, your country and leading out all these players and having that privilege. Then you add in the part where people who are out there who are black can see Ife captain Scotland, Ife playing for Scotland over 100 times.

"Maybe then their younger selves can be like, I can do it, and no-one can tell them anything differently."

'Speak up, and speak up sooner'

Across the world, sport has united behind the Black Lives Matter movement to try to combat racism, with footballers in England and Scotland taking a knee before matches to support the cause.

It is an issue of which Dieke has first-hand experience. She speaks of comments aimed at her by both spectators and opponents, while underlining the need to speak up if you feel targeted.

"We were in Russia and in Bulgaria," says the Scot, who lives in Florida. "Back then there wasn't as many fans and you would hear the screams and shouts and the words they'd say. You try to block it out.

"My team-mates were so supportive. I remember one incident - Anna [Signeul, former Scotland manager] did try to tell the delegate to report it because you think 'all I'm doing is playing football and all you want to do because of the colour of my skin is abuse me and shout at me'.

"I don't think anything ever happened with it."

She added: "You feel like you're powerless. Maybe when I was younger, it was like more shame and you wouldn't say anything because you feel bad. You think 'what could they do?'

"If I was talking to the younger me, it would be to speak up - and speak up sooner. Never let anyone damper my hunger, I always had the drive to do it. But, if someone called me something, rather than sweeping it under the carpet, speak up a bit more."
The 'Chris Iwelumo Meets' podcast will be available later this month on BBC Sounds.

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After all, it isn't about money or glamour. It certainly isn't about trophies or medals. For Ifeoma Dieke, it was a conclusion sourced straight from the soul. "It's all about what you want to do with your heart, I followed mine and it led me to Scotland.

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Abolitionism and why it was opposed | History - Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners

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Abolition & Why it was Opposed - Britain

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Abolition & Why it was Opposed - Britain

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Abolitionism and why it was opposed | History - Britain's Forgotten Slave Owners

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Welcome to the Learn section, full of resources for learners of all ages. Teachers, search our resources by curriculum area below, or use the Teaching Toolbox for practical help with the Digital Competence Framework. Select Lifelong Learning to see our resources for adult learners.

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Welcome to the Learn section, full of resources for learners of all ages. Teachers, search our resources by curriculum area below, or use the Teaching Toolbox for practical help with the Digital Competence Framework. Select Lifelong Learning to see our resources for adult learners.

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Resources to support the teaching of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic histories and perspectives

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Resources to support the teaching of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic histories and perspectives

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A range of information and resources to support the teaching of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic histories and perspectives, as the part of the Curriculum for Wales 2022. Resources are under AoLEs but are cross curricular

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Veterans tell their stories for future generations.

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(Image: WESTERN MAIL)

He was believed to have been the inspiration for Steve McQueen's character in The Great Escape.

Wing Commander Ken Rees was a Second World War pilot with Bomber Command, who was captured with two colleagues after his Wellington Bomber was shot down over Norway in 1942 during a mine laying operation, just two weeks after getting married.

He was imprisoned in Poland's Stalag Luft III, which was designed especially for captured airmen. But against all adversity in his way, he refused to be browbeaten by his German captors.

Mr Rees played a vital part in the Great Escape from the camp, helping to dig the tunnel from which a daring escape was made in March 1944. Ken was a digger on the Tunnel 'Harry', the longest of all the tunnels and the one used in the escape. In the 1963 film of the famous feat, Steve McQueen's character is said to be based on Ken due to his antagonistic attitude towards his captors, a result of his brother-in-law, Sqn Ldr Harold Starr, being shot under his parachute during the Battle of Britain.
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He was fortunate to survive the breakout - he was the last man to come out of the tunnel while German shots rang out around him after they discovered the escape attempt. He rushed back along the tunnel on all fours to the camp after the Germans opened fire. Only three of the 76 who escaped reached Britain - the remainder were recaptured, with 50 killed.

Mr Rees, who lived in Rhosneigr, Anglesey, died aged 93 in September 2014. Now, nearly seven years on, he has been immortalised, with a train named in his honour.

Great Western Railway (GWR) set out to mark last year's 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War by naming seven of its Intercity Express Trains after remarkable people involved in the conflict.

Wing Commander Rees's name now features on Intercity Express Train 800310, forming the 1122 service from Swansea to London Paddington.

A train-naming ceremony took place at Swansea station on Friday, May 7, attended by RAF Air Officer for Wales, Air Commodore Dai Williams, the RAF Queen's Colour Squadron, and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales, David TC Davies.

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales, David TC Davies MP said: "It's only fitting that Wing Commander Ken Rees' memory is being honoured in this way by Great Western Railway. He was a proud Welshman whose exceptional bravery and painstaking efforts helped 76 men escape from captivity. His heroics have rightly gone down in the annals of history and his significant wartime contribution continues to be remembered."

GWR Engineering Director, Simon Green, added: "We are honoured to be naming one of our Intercity Express Trains after Wing Commander Ken Rees, who played such a critical role as a member of the digging team in the 'Great Escape'.

"We at Great Western Railway have a long history of naming trains after Great Westerners, the past and present heroes from across our network. It is right that we honour some of those heroes of the war effort, remembering the sacrifice, bravery and tenacity that later generations owe so much to."

Mr Rees always maintained he had nothing to do with the story that McQueen's character was loosely based on him.

He had said: "He is taller than I am, I'm heavier than he is, he's American and I'm a Welshman - the only things we've got in common is that we both annoyed the Germans and ended up doing stretches in the cooler.

"I didn't get out and if I did, I wouldn't have been able to ride a motorbike anyway."

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Th Welshman whose heroics inspired The Great Escape

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He was believed to have been the inspiration for Steve McQueen's character in The Great Escape. Wing Commander Ken Rees was a Second World War pilot with Bomber Command, who was captured with two colleagues after his Wellington Bomber was shot down over Norway in 1942 during a mine laying operation, just two weeks after getting married.

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Capturing war-time memories, before it is too late

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With every passing year, fewer of the men and women who helped defeat Nazi Germany and liberate Europe remain alive to share their stories. Before Remembrance Sunday - when the service and sacrifice of those who defended the country's freedom is commemorated - BBC News's Allan Little spoke to three veterans.

In 1943, an advert in the Daily Gleaner newspaper , "Britain needs you," caught the eye of a teenager growing up in Jamaica, Neil Flanigan.

"As loyal members of the Empire, we thought that it was good to go and help the mother country at a time when they were in distress," he says.

And he sailed across the Atlantic, in a group of ships, to join the Royal Air Force (RAF).

"The German U-boats were picking us off, sinking us," Neil says. "We thought nothing about our personal lives."

Neil is one of the last surviving members of the generation whose youth was defined by World War Two.

Another, Christian Lamb, 102, from London, was in France when war broke out.

"I'd gone there to improve my French," she says. "I got a telegram from my father, saying, 'War declared. Return home.'"

Back in the UK, Christian joined the Women's Royal Naval Service, known as the Wrens, and was posted to Belfast.

She worked as a plotter in a map room, tracking the progress of the North Atlantic shipping convoys as they tried to evade U-boat attacks.

One day, Royal Navy destroyer HMS Oribi arrived in Belfast for repairs.

"Half a dozen of us went down to have a drink on board - and there I met John Lamb, my future husband," Christian says.

Over the course of the Oribi's 10 days in port, John and Christian fell in love and became engaged.

But when Lt Lamb's ship left Belfast to join a convoy, Christian wondered whether she would ever see her fiance again.

Ahead of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, in 2025, the BBC is trying to gather as many first-hand accounts from surviving veterans as possible, to preserve them for future generations.

Working with a number of partners, including the Normandy Memorial Trust and the Royal British Legion, the BBC has already spoken to many men and women who served during the War - you can watch their testimonies here.

Growing up in a Jewish family in south London, Mervyn Kersh, now 97, had been following news of Hitler and the growth of Nazi Germany since before the War.

"We knew what was happening to Jewish people under the Nazis - that was a big part of why I wanted to join up," he says.

Mervyn joined the Royal Army Ordnance Corps - and soon after his basic training, was heading to Normandy alongside an invasion force.

Meanwhile, the RAF had trained Neil in avionics - the electronic systems used on aircraft.

And he was stationed at bases across England, keeping bomber crews in the air.

"The Germans bombed us, day and night," Neil says. "People from the Empire and Commonwealth died - many of my colleagues who had volunteered to be aircrew and rear gunners and engineers

"It was ghastly as a young person watching death - but I had a job to do, to get out and maintain my aircraft to make sure they'd fly safely."

In Belfast, Christian was tracking her fiance's convoy across the Atlantic, when it came under attack from German U-boats.

"They were involved in this terrible battle," she says. "My friends urged me to go home - but I couldn't possibly leave the scene. It was a matter of life and death for me. So I stayed, waiting for information, hoping."

Christian learned HMS Oribi had collided with a U-Boat and been damaged.

But she knew nothing of the crew's fate - until the ship eventually arrived in Boston and John was able to ring to tell her he was safe.

"There was nothing for either of us to say - just, 'Thank goodness, thank goodness, thank goodness,'" Christian says.

When Christian was posted back to London, she was given a top-secret role planning the D-Day landings, working from a windowless basement office in Whitehall.

"This was going to be the most extraordinary, enormous invasion ever seen in history," she says. "The whole of my office was covered with enormous maps of France.

"I didn't realise how important it was. I was sworn to secrecy. It was ingrained in us that we didn't even talk about it after the War - I didn't tell John till about 50 years later."

Mervyn crossed the English Channel three days after D-Day.

"That was the first time I really realised what I was going into," he says. "The adventure ceased to be an adventure and I became frightened.

"I had a prayer book with me, a Book of Psalms, which I did make use of, I must admit."

Mervyn took part in the liberation of Europe, as the Allied armies fought through France, Belgium, the Netherlands and into Germany.

"That was a marvellous feeling," he says. "Our name was the British Liberation Army, then we suddenly changed to the British Army of the Rhine. We weren't liberators anymore, we were conquerors."

Just days after its liberation, Mervyn arrived at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

"I saw the people who were able to walk out," he says. "I spoke to dozens of them - mostly men in striped clothing. They were as thin as anything, thin faces, the arms just bone. It was very moving.

"I gave them my chocolate ration - it was only weeks later that I learned chocolate is the worst thing you can give someone who hasn't eaten."

They are a remarkable generation.

The courage and sacrifice of their youth bequeathed to those who came later, these veterans shaped the world we grew up in.

The youngest are now in their late 90s, while some - such as Christian - are centenarians.

It seems more important than ever to listen to their stories and record their reflections for future generations.

After the War, Mervyn spent time as a door-to-door salesman - a job he did not enjoy.

Later, he worked for many years as a freelance journalist.

Christian married John, wearing a wedding dress bought by her mother from a war-time catalogue.

The couple had a family and, in her 80s, Christian began a successful career as an author - writing books on botanical history, as well as a war-time memoir.

Neil settled in the UK and raised a family here.

He was appointed an MBE in recognition of his service to his community.

"I think I made a contribution in some small way," he says, "to make Britain safe and sound today, a country that I still live in and enjoy."

Do you or someone you know have memories of World War Two? Please share these experiences by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.

Some of the stories collected may be shared with our partners and used on BBC News platforms.

Please include a contact number if willing to speak to a BBC News journalist.

You can also contact BBC News in the following ways:

If you are reading this page but cannot see the form, visit the BBC website's mobile version to submit a question or comment, or email HaveYourSay@bbc.co.uk.

Please include your name, age and location with any submission.

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Capturing war-time memories, before it is too late

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Three of the last generation of World War Two veterans share recollections of the deadliest war in history.

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South African World War Two hero Job Maseko was denied the highest military award because he was black, campaigners believe, and his family have backed a push to get him the posthumous honour.

War hero Lance Corporal Job Maseko died a poor man in 1952.

Struck by a train in a tragic accident aged just 36 his exploits were in danger of being forgotten.

A decade earlier, while a prisoner of war, he used an improvised explosive to blow up a German freighter docked in Tobruk, Libya.

Once back in South Africa, his treatment, compared to white veterans, reflected the racist policies of the time - and there are some who believe this extended to how he was honoured for his act of bravery.

He was awarded the Military Medal "for meritorious and courageous action" but Bill Gillespie, who thinks he was blocked from receiving the Victoria Cross (VC), the highest honour, is campaigning to get it upgraded.

'Sorrow and pride'

Maseko's family support the move.

"I'm very proud of what he did but at the same time, there's sorrow. If he were a white soldier we believe he would've received the [higher] award," his niece Jennifer Nkosi Maaba tells the BBC while laying flowers at his grave.

About 80,000 black South Africans served in the Native Military Corps (NMC). After the war, they were given bicycles and boots, and sometimes a suit, as a reward. White soldiers received housing and land.

The South African authorities were also reluctant to celebrate and highlight Maseko's action as it "represented the possibilities of empowerment offered by military service that the state wanted to curtail", according to historian Suryakanthie Chetty.

Members of the NMC were not issued firearms, but could carry traditional weapons, and served as non-combatants, working as labourers, guards or in a medical role.

Maseko, himself, was a stretcher bearer for the allied forces in North Africa, where he rescued wounded men often under heavy fire.

Blowing up a ship

But he became a prisoner of war in June 1942 when his commander surrendered to the Germans in Tobruk. There he was put to work on the docks unloading supplies.

Using knowledge that he had picked up working in gold mines in South Africa, on 21 July Maseko filled a small tin with gunpowder and placed it near some petrol drums in the hold of a ship which sank after the explosion, according to the official citation that went with his Military Medal.

He "displayed ingenuity, determination and complete disregard of personal safety from punishment by the enemy or from the ensuing explosion which set the vessel alight".

"He deserves more than a pair of boots and a bicycle for his bravery... He deserves the Victoria Cross because his courage put South Africa's military prowess on the map," Ms Nkosi Maaba says, reflecting on her uncle's actions of nearly 80 years ago.

Mr Gillespie, who is behind efforts to get a VC for Maseko, believes that the veteran's skin colour meant the highest possible award was blocked by South Africa.

"I'm absolutely certain of that... the Military Medal was just a consolation prize," says the campaigner, whose father also fought for South Africa in World War Two.

Neville Lewis, South Africa's official war artist during the conflict, alleged that Maseko was "recommended for a Victoria Cross but being 'only an African' he had received the Military Medal instead", according to JS Mohlamme, writing in South Africa's Military History Journal.

The curator of the National Museum of Military History, which prominently displays Maseko's portrait, agrees that he should have got a higher award.

"The sad reality is that black South Africans who volunteered to be part of the army just like their white counterparts were treated unfairly. Personally I think that Mr Maseko should've got the VC," Alan Sinclair tells the BBC.

But according to the head of the Victoria Cross Trust, which works to preserve the memories of those awarded the medal, there may have been other reasons for him not receiving the highest honour.

"There's no doubt that what Job did in terms of the sabotage of the ship was exceptionally dangerous and would've probably have led to his death had he been caught," Keith Lumley says.

"However at the moment it doesn't seem to quite hit the level of a VC because it wasn't witnessed. While there's no doubt that he did what he did... but nobody actually saw him do it. I just get the sense from what I've read that his Military Medal was a reflection of his actions."

As for the UK's ministry of defence, it seems unlikely that it will at the moment upgrade the award.

While acknowledging the bravery of all African servicemen and women in World War Two, a spokesperson told the BBC in an email that "we cannot consider retrospective awards because we are unable to confirm the circumstances or compare the merits between cases that took place so many years ago".

'Statue for Job'

Mr Gillespie's efforts to get the ministry to change its mind hit a setback when a petition to try and raise the issue in the UK's parliament was rejected on a technicality. It was turned down as these types of petitions cannot call for someone to get an award.

But he believes more should be done to commemorate Maseko's gallantry.

"We're busy arguing about removing statues but how about we put one up for Job... that way he'll always be remembered."

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And Mr Lumley offers some hope.

He points out that Teddy Sheean of the Australian Navy was awarded a VC in November last year following 50 years of lobbying by his family for an act that took place in 1942.

"So in Job's case I'm not saying he hasn't earned the VC but more work needs to be done to find those extra details that would cause the VC to be appropriate."

But in his home town, the Kwa-Thema township in Springs, Maseko's legacy lives on. A main road and a primary school have been named after him and a large mural with his portrait has also been painted.

At his graveside, his niece is obviously pleased about the renewed attention his story is getting.

Turning to the headstone Ms Nkosi Maaba proudly says: "Your memory lives on uncle, continue resting in peace."

Nomsa Maseko is a distant relative of Job but has not played any part in the campaign backed by his close family.

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Job Maseko: The South African WW2 hero who didn't get a Victoria Cross

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South African World War Two hero Job Maseko was denied the highest military award because he was black, campaigners believe, and his family have backed a push to get him the posthumous honour. War hero Lance Corporal Job Maseko died a poor man in 1952.

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South Asian & Muslim Heritage in Scotland

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South Asian & Muslim Heritage in Scotland

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In Scotland we often think of ourselves as a welcoming country. But in the early 20th century, when Edinburgh venues introduced a 'colour bar', many residents and visitors to the city found themselves treated as second class citizens.

An unfounded hope?

In January 1921, 17-year-old Diwan Pitamber Nath made the 5,000 mile journey from Punjab in British India to Liverpool. He wanted to become a doctor. Perhaps he was inspired by Queen Victoria's promise to the Indian people in 1858 that "...all shall alike enjoy the equal and impartial protection of the Law... whatever Race or Creed".

Nath set his sights on Scotland where, even as early as 1920, it wasn't unusual to see students of colour from the British colonies. Edinburgh was home to the first South Asian student association in Britain and Nath would have been an active member in the Edinburgh Indian Association (EIA).

Shortly before Nath embarked on his journey to Edinburgh, the YMCA even opened a dedicated hostel for Indian students at No. 5 Grosvenor Crescent. He may have stayed there when he first arrived in the city.

But as Nath reached his final year of study, there was an unwelcoming shift in the city that had become his home away from home.

The Edinburgh Indian Association and the Indian Students' Union began to receive letters from local venues. One, later published in the Guardian on 1 June 1927, read:

"I should like you to inform all members of the Union who use the above restaurant, on and after Saturday 23rd inst. admittance will be refused... I may add that this is not directed against the Indian community only, but includes all coloured patrons."

Edinburgh had introduced a 'colour bar'.

The 1927 Edinburgh Colour Bar

Dance halls offered most of the entertainment and opportunities to socialise in the early 20th century. Venues like the Palais de Danse in Edinburgh hosted up to 900 dancers on a good night.

However, based on the colour of their skin, Edinburgh's population of Indians, Africans, Caribbean and Chinese residents, many of them students like Nath, were now unable to attend. They found themselves being treated as second class citizens in the Scottish city they called home.

By early 1927 most dance halls, along with some cafes, restaurants and boarding houses, placed restrictions on people of colour. Managers unashamedly cited their reasoning as being to appease other - white - patrons, who objected to sharing a space with people of other races.

As the segregationist policy took hold across the city, the Assembly Rooms and Music Hall on Edinburgh's George Street was the scene of "protest meetings". Records are unclear whether the dance hall itself operated a colour bar.

81 years prior, African American freedom fighter Frederick Douglass had been welcomed there to speak against slavery to an audience of 2,000 listeners. Paradoxically, if they did operate a bar and had he arrived in the 1920s, Douglass may not have even been allowed to enter the building.

The Edinburgh Indian Association

With growing support for independence in India and a coordinated community body in the EIA, Edinburgh's Indian residents became bolder in their fight against this blatant discrimination. Some particularly vocal figures were Dr S A Rahman, Brajanath D Chowdhury and Nath himself.

The EIA refused to take part in the Empire Day pageant celebrations of 1927. Dr Rahman relayed the collective feelings of Edinburgh's Indian population in a telegram to the King's Private Sectary.

On 21 May, he spoke to The Scotsman of the "...humiliation and the spirit of racial hatred" that left the Indian population feeling unable to join the celebrations due to an "...[incompatibility] with our sense of self-respect...".

In the Westminster Gazette, Indians described feeling as though they were treated as "social lepers" in the Scottish city.

International attention

In retaliation to the colour bar Nath, who had gone dancing in the halls he was now banned from, told The Scotsman on 21 May 1927:

"These students ... would naturally tell their countrymen what they had undergone. The bar ... would become known to, and would be resented by the millions in India..."

Indeed, in seeking international support, the EIA sent reports of the Edinburgh colour bar to every leading newspaper in India. The resulting headlines added fuel to the flames of India's growing independence movement.

Aware of the growing pressure, the issue was taken to parliament by two MPs, George Lansbury and Shapurji Saklatvala. Unfortunately, while many politicians disagreed with the colour bar, it was decided it was a private matter and not something ministers could get involved with.

Colour bar condemned

In May 1927, the General Assembly of the United Free Church and the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland discussed the colour bar. They condemned it openly, expressing sympathies over the bitterness it had caused.

Providing a glimmer of hope, on 3 June 1927, The Scotsman reported that the Magistrates and the Council passed a unanimous motion disapproving of the colour bar. But, though now widely condemned, lifting the policy was not legally enforced. Venues continued to deny entry or services to people of colour.

To keep up pressure, on 10 June, the EIA in its leading role with the Anti-Colour Ban Sub-committee arranged a protest meeting at the Music Hall.

They invited Frederick Alexander Macquisten, a lawyer and MP for Argyllshire, to attend. Macquisten responded with fuel for the fire, encouraging people in India to reciprocate. He said:

"In my opinion, you should be very grateful to these proprietors of the dance halls for what they have done. I am sure that all Indian fathers and mothers will be only too glad to have their sons excluded from dance halls, places where they are liable to make undesirable acquaintances, and to waste the time which they ought to be spending upon their studies which their parents make great sacrifices to enable them to pursue."

The meeting went ahead and by July the Dundee Courier had reported that "a satisfactory arrangement has been arrived at, under which coloured men are to be allowed to attend under certain conditions".

A statement in numbers

Despite this progress, newspaper headlines a few years later reveal that some cafes and dance halls did not agree to lift the bar. Others made the terms of entry so restrictive it was as though the bar was still in full force. But by the 1930s, patience towards the segregationist policy was very limited.

On Tuesday 28 April 1931, an Indian and an African student visited a cafe in Edinburgh and were refused entry without explanation. This act (reported in the Guardian), lead to the unfolding of an anti-racist stance by customers, one of whom "urged all fair-minded people in the cafe to leave as a protest against the ban." A large number of those present walked out in solidarity with the students of colour.

Incensed, the Students' Representative Council of Edinburgh University sparked an investigation and asked for an apology. When none was forthcoming, at the end of May 1931, they declared a boycott by all students of "the Cafeteria and the Strand Café".

Several newspapers published statements by management from other cafes, which included a range of conditions applicable to the permitted entry of people of colour. These were essentially excuses and loopholes that enabled a continuation of their racist practices.

Barring a Black bishop

In August 1937, African American Bishop William Henry Heard travelled 3,000 miles with his niece to attend a conference. Heard had been enslaved until the age of 15, before being liberated in the American Civil War. He was a vocal advocate of civil rights and a clergyman of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

On arrival at the North British Railway Station Hotel in Edinburgh, they were denied entry. That the pair experienced the same racial exclusion Nath had suggests that despite the supporters and solidarity, little had really changed in those 10 years.

After four hours of searching, and offers of hospitality from the Archbishop of York, Bishop Heard and his niece secured a room at a smaller hotel in the West End of Edinburgh.

While many hotel managers approached by the press at the time denied the existence of a colour bar, they pointed to the "tremendous antipathy" of their other American tourists towards Black people.

Bishop Heard later received letters from Scottish residents. Embarrassed by his treatment, some even offered to welcome him to their homes if he ever returned. He also received an apology from Sir John Simon, Chancellor of the Exchequer.

End of the Edinburgh colour bars

Reports of discriminatory practices in Edinburgh continue through to the 1950s. It wasn't made illegal to refuse service on the basis of race until 1965, following the introduction of the Race Relations Act. We know, of course, that this didn't end discrimination. But what happened to the students who campaigned in the early 20th century?

Diwan Pitamber Nath passed his medical exams. He served as a Lieut. Colonel in the Indian Medical Service in the Second World War. In later life, he worked for the World Health Organisation. He passed away in Edinburgh and was taken back to his family in New Delhi.

Brajanath D Chowdhury, another EIA member who spoke out against the colour bar, married a local woman - Mary Black McDowall. He may have even met her one night in a dance hall.

Today, there are more than 55,000 people of Asian origin living in Scotland. There are also more than 4,000 Indian international students currently studying here. They make up a small but significant 1% of the total population.

Are you related to any of the people we've mentioned here? Do you have any images, memories or stories to share? You can email to let us know.
Thanks and acknowledgements to UncoverEd on their research into the Edinburgh colour bar, and to Bryony Donnelly for support on the original source material.

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The Edinburgh Colour Bars - Historic Environment Scotland Blog

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In the 20th Century many Scottish venues refused entry to people of colour. Find out the story of the Edinburgh colour bars.

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He was from Calcutta and had attended public school in England and during the war he wanted to join the Royal Flying Corps but it was difficult for him to join up.

Asian and Black people, anyone who was "not from pure European stock", were not able to become British Officers and therefore not encouraged to join the air force.

But during the war, the number of casualties forced a change in rules.

In 1918, he went to the front line in France and in 13 days in July 1918, he shot down 10 German aircraft in his SE5A, before he was killed in a dogfight.

He was buried with full military honours.

This clip is from the series The World's War.

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History GCSE: The Indian Royal Flying Corps fighter ace in WW1

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He was from Calcutta and had attended public school in England and during the war he wanted to join the Royal Flying Corps but it was difficult for him to join up. Asian and Black people, anyone who was "not from pure European stock", were not able to become British Officers and therefore not encouraged to join the air force.

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Historians, David Olosuga, Santanu Das and Geoff Bridger explore the experience of Sikh soldier, Manta Singh, and other Indian soldiers brought over to bolster the British army during World War One.

The Indian Corps made up a third of the British army and they were some of the first troops thrown into trench warfare, where they experienced the full horrors of the front.

Manta Singh went into battle at Neuve Chappelle in 1915, when more than four thousand Indian soldiers were killed in 3 days of fighting.

He became friends with the British army officer, Captain George Henderson, and we hear how Manta Singh rescued Henderson after being shot.

Manta Singh was cremated at the Chattri Monument on the South Downs and the legacy of his friendship with Captain Henderson has continued down the generations in their families.

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History GCSE: Different cultural cooperation in World War One

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Historians, David Olosuga, Santanu Das and Geoff Bridger explore the experience of Sikh soldier, Manta Singh, and other Indian soldiers brought over to bolster the British army during World War One. The Indian Corps made up a third of the British army and they were some of the first troops thrown into trench warfare, where they experienced the full horrors of the front.

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He was one of English football's first black players and the British Army's first ever black officer to command white troops.

But 100 years after he died aged 29 on the battlefields of World War One, the name Walter Tull means little to most people.

Tull was an orphan who had to overcome adversity all of his life, including being racially abused while a pioneering forward for Tottenham Hotspur and Northampton Town.

His death received little media attention at the time, and it is only in recent years that his powerful story has started to be fully recognised, in large part due to the work of historian and biographer Phil Vasili.

A campaign for Tull to be awarded the Military Cross is ongoing, with renewed calls for the prime minister to intervene.

This is the forgotten story of a footballer and war hero.

The obituary of Walter Tull, 100 years on

Second Lieutenant Walter Tull died while engaged in combat near Arras in Northern France. He was 29.

In the early hours of 21 March 1918, a fog hung over much of the British line on the Western Front in France.

At 4.40am, a German bombardment began. It was of a different order to any that had come before it.

It marked the start of what became known as the German Spring offensive - a last throw of the dice to turn the war in their favour and score a decisive breakthrough.

Over the next five hours more than 6,600 German guns fired 3.5 million explosive shells on British positions. The sound could be heard as far away as London.

Into the midst of this death, destruction and chaos came Walter Tull, an officer of the British Army in spite of his "non-European" heritage, which should have barred such a commission.

With the British Army fighting a fierce rearguard defensive action, Tull was shot and killed.

Tull had played many roles throughout his short life: a brother, a son, an orphan, a footballer, a soldier, an officer and, finally, a war hero.

At every stage he had to overcome adversity and challenges - obstacles he refused to let define him.

Born in Folkestone, his young life was marked by tragedy when his mother, Alice, died of breast cancer when Tull was just seven.

Two years later, his father, Daniel, passed away of heart disease.

Daniel Tull had arrived in Britain from his native Barbados in 1876 having worked his way over as a ship's carpenter.

The death of both parents left their children facing severe financial difficulties. Walter and his brother Edward were eventually taken in by an orphanage in Bethnal Green, part of an organisation known today as Action For Children.

"Walter and Edward found themselves in the most precarious and vulnerable position," says the charity's chief executive Carol Iddon.

"They were welcomed into a national children's home, where staff encouraged Walter's love of football - helping to shape both the life he would lead and the man he would become."

The brothers were together and kept in contact with the rest of their family back in Folkestone.

Further trauma was to befall Tull, though, when he and his brother were separated through Edward's adoption by a couple from Glasgow.

Now alone in the orphanage, Walter excelled at sport and went on to play for amateur team Clapton FC.

Spotted by Tottenham Hotspur, he was soon playing at White Hart Lane in front of crowds in the tens of thousands.

One of the first black players in the English game, he was subjected to terrible racial abuse. One newspaper report at the time described how, during a match at Bristol City in 1909, "a section of the crowd made a cowardly attack on him in language lower than Billingsgate".

The reporter wrote: "Let me tell those Bristol hooligans that Tull is so clean in mind and method as to be a model for all white men who play football. In point of ability, if not actual achievement, Tull was the best forward on the field."

His career at Spurs drifted following the racial abuse he suffered. Confined to the reserves, his fortunes were revived when Herbert Chapman signed him for Northampton Town in 1911 for a "substantial fee".

He went on to play 111 games for the club before the outbreak of World War One took his life down a radically different path.

Tull enlisted with Middlesex Regiment, part of a 'Footballers' Battalion' that drew professional players from a range of clubs.

He fought extensively in the war, at one stage being sent home suffering from "shell shock" - what today would be diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder.

He returned to the conflict, having been made an officer, and served on the Italian Front from November 1917 to early March 1918.

It was here he was cited for his "gallantry and coolness" by Major-General Sydney Lawford, after leading 26 men on a night raid against an enemy position. He and his men crossed the cold River Piave into enemy territory before returning, all unharmed despite coming under heavy fire.

Major Poole, the commanding officer of the 23rd Middlesex Regiment, and 2nd Lt Pickard said Tull had been put forward for a Military Cross. Pickard wrote Tull "had certainly earned it".

His family are still waiting for that medal to be awarded but Tull's great nephew Ed Finlayson is keen that a renewed focus on Tull's life focuses on more than the issue of the Military Cross.

"We have seen the creation of educational materials, publications, community projects, activities in the arts and sport - including dramas, plays, and documentaries - concerning Walter's life and issues of inequality and discrimination," he says.

"This year of centenary may provide a particular spotlight on his story and life.

"If aspects of his life have been helpful in supporting and promoting the need to challenge inequality and discrimination - and perhaps provided some encouragement in this endeavour - you hope this will not diminish once the centenary of his death has passed."

Such activities have included the , a government and Lottery-funded initiative that aims to use Tull's story to boost community cohesion and inclusivity. A range of projects are taking place across the country backed by the Football Association, the Premier League and the EFL.

Tull's death was therefore not the end of his impact on British society.

But he was not to know this in the chaos and confusion that followed the enormous German offensive of March 1918.

Such was the ferocity of the attack, the British Army had considered falling back to defend the Channel ports given the pressure they were under and the huge loss of life. British and French forces suffered a combined 250,000 casualties but, ultimately, the Germans ran out of momentum and the tide of the war was to eventually turn irrevocably against them by November that year.

On 25 March, Tull was shot and fatally wounded.

It is reported Private Tom Billingham - a former goalkeeper for Leicester Fosse - attempted to drag Tull's body back to the British position so he could be buried. His efforts failed and Walter's body lay in the soil of northern France, like so many that fought and died in the Great War.

Tull's life is now commemorated at the Arras Memorial, meticulously maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves. His name is engraved along with 34,785 other soldiers with no known grave, who died in the area between the spring of 1916 and 7 August 1918.

A lasting memorial and remembrance garden in the shadow of Northampton Town's stadium also remembers the life of one of Britain's most unknown and under-appreciated heroes.

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Walter Tull: Football pioneer and war hero

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He was one of English football's first black players and the British Army's first ever black officer to command white troops. But 100 years after he died aged 29 on the battlefields of World War One, the name Walter Tull means little to most people.

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Unit: Walter Tull's Scrapbook by Michaela Morgan | Teacher Hub | Oak National Academy

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Unit: Walter Tull's Scrapbook by Michaela Morgan

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Arthur Roberts - WW1 - On the front line

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Arthur Roberts - WW1 - On the front line

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Between February 1917 and March 1918 Private Arthur William David Roberts (1897-1982) kept a diary of his military service, later using his daily entries to write an extended narrative of his experiences in France.

His diary and memoirs are a portrait of his personal journey from raw, wide-eyed recruit to a man coming to terms with the full horror of trench warfare. His story remained unknown and unpublished until a chance find 20 years after his death. It is a rare first-hand account of one of the few black British men to have served in the trenches of the Western Front.

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In 1917-18 Private Arthur Roberts kept a diary of his military service, later using his entries to write an extended narrative of his experiences in France. It is a rare first-hand account of one of the few black British men to have served in the trenches of the Western Front.

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History GCSE: Overcoming racial stereotypes in World War One

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Historian and film-maker, David Olusoga, explores how negative racial attitudes were challenged in France during World War One as new friendships were forged.

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History GCSE: The Imperial scope of a European War

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Historian David Olusoga reflects on the global scope of the World War One through the empires of the European nations in a GCSE History resource.