Amelia King & racism in the WWII Land Army (1943)

In September 2012 black historian Caroline Bressey appeared in a 5 mins sequence in the last 18 mins of episode 2 of the BBC TV documentary series ‘Wartime Farm’ outlining the case of Amelia King (d. 1995?), a black London-born woman who was refused employment by the WWII Land Army on the grounds that no white farmer would want a black person on the farm. Her father was a merchent seaman and her brother was in the navy. Rather than taking this dismissal quietly King took her case to her local MP and the matter was raised in parliament in 1943. When the story hit the national newspapers farmer Alfred Roberts offered her work but she insisted it be arranged through the Land Army – which subsequently became the case.