How I learned to stop worrying[1] & love local history…
Two very important people I need to thank, before I start: my sister Emma & the storyteller, James Pogson.
Without their feedback on my 1st draft, of this taster, intended to whet your appetite, I would’ve left you all thunderstruck.
What is there to love about local history?
It’s relevant, it’s on our doorstep. It’s topical/current. & it concerns us.
What is not to love? Right?
So, what was I worrying about? Why did I find it hard to love local history?
I’m local. Born & raised in Leamington Spa
My parents were local. They may’ve been born & raised in Jamaica, but they lived in Leamington Spa for over 50 yrs.
But local history didn’t seem to include people like me. It didn’t seem to include people like my parents.
We don’t seem to be included in the local history books, in the local collections of local museums & in the local media coverage of local news.
Why are our lives being overlooked? & we make up over 20% of the population of Coventry & Warks.
We pay our way, but we’re being short-changed. But you’re being shortchanged too. You’re missing out on our stories. Think what that inclusivity would bring to all of us.
Have you ever been to a well-attended event, having a great get-together, lots of community spirit, & I don’t just mean weddings & funerals.
I mean Coventry’s annual Caribbean carnival, Jamaican Independence Day celebrations at Hector Ashwood’s Talbot Inn pub in Leamington Spa, (Hector’s is commemorated in a 2015 poem was called Rushmore St, by Brenda Tai Layton). I mean a whole range of arts & cultural events…
And naturally, in the 1980s & early 1990s, you look in the local newspapers, you listen out on local radio, looking to see & hear coverage of the event. & there’s nothing,
So, you call into the local museum to look at the coverage. Maybe, in previous years, there was better coverage. So, you look. & there’s nothing.
Or if there is any coverage it is on the white people in attendance, eg. On the Lord & Lady Mayor. The event they’re attending becomes incidental in the way that it is reported.
How does that make you feel?
It made me feel as if people like me were unwelcome.
We’re not being celebrated in the coverage of local history. & yet we’ve lived here since the 1950s, in the case of my own family. Generations of us have been born & raised here. We are local history, & yet we’re not being given status.
It made me feel as if we’re not supposed to belong.
So, given that situation, what was I worrying about?
I worried that, if I challenged people about the lack of black & Asian representation, in the local history provision, I’d be disregarded as hostile & antagonistic. Just an angry black woman.
I worried that whenever I attended local history talks, walks, etc., I was usually the only black face in the room.
What does this mean? Does it mean that it shouldn’t be for me?
Am I welcome at local history events? Does my non-white presence make the other history group members feel uncomfortable?
I worried that, because I’m not an historian, there might be nuances and issues of local history that I’m misunderstanding.
Local history pays attention to the local places where things happened, right?
But which local history books make any meaningful reference to black & Asian places of worship, education, socializing?
Aside from the religious aspects, why has there been and, to some extent, why is there still, a need for such specialized provision?
Local history pays attention to the local people who made and/or who make things happen…
It pays attention to the ordinary people & the way they live, work & play…
But which local history books make any meaningful reference to black & Asian lives at work & play, or to any meaningful reference to particular black & Asian people? I’ve done more than look. I’ve been actively searching.
So, given all this omission and lack of representation, how did I learn to stop worrying & love local history?
I was lucky enough to read the 1994 book by Jim & Brenda Layton: an inter-racial couple who’ve lived in LSpa since the 1970s. The well-illustrated book documents the early black presence in Coventry & Warks.
I was hooked. I was seeing people like me, and people like my parents, in local history books!
Representation matters. The book, by the Laytons, gave me a feeling of being included.
Yes, local history was for me. I am local history.
My strange love for local history no longer seemed strange. (see what I did there?)
From that point onwards I began to actively seek out publications & events that focussed on the local black presence, past & present. Now that I knew it existed, I was determined to find more.
That’s how I came across the Bham-based Barbara Willis-Brown and the work produced by her team of SCAWDI detectives.
As a 2ry school English teacher, I create materials for BH school assembles & for in-school BHM displays. But this isn’t enough. I want to make more people so aware of the black presence in local history, that the local history shelves will be forced to reflect this.
And so, I began to think about giving talks to local history groups. & that’s when the real problems started.
I still had the love, but I was starting to worry again:
By this time, I’d accumulated so much material that I couldn’t structure it.
Consequently, the two talks I did give, one to a group in Kenilworth & one to a group in Coventry, were not as effective as I wanted them to be. Garbled is the word that comes to mine, when I think of how I splurged out information & images.
Volunteering for local history projects (at least 7 since 1994) has helped me to find my focus.
Each time I explained what I’m archiving, and why, things became more coherent.
I waded through my material, focusing on the 5s. Not 6 degrees of separation, but the 5s. Eg. The 5 Erics, the 5 Glorias. 5 welders, 5 auxiliary nurses. & so on.
Behind every name, in every 5, is a face & a story, related to factors that led to the arrival of my selected person (or to the arrival of their antecedents), the settling-in experiences, positive & negative, the returning (if applicable) & the legacy – the impact of this person’s presence in the local area.
But all the 5s lead back to my own family. You can probably guess in what ways.
Each talk that I give, each chapter that I write, sheds light on 5 black lives in Coventry & Warks, past & present, to illustrate an aspect of local history that has, so far, been largely overlooked in the local history provisions that I’ve scrutinized.
And the future?
The future is looking bright. A range of national commemorations gives rise to local opportunities respond & becomes a benchmark against which we can measure how well we’re doing.
· The UK’s October BHM – celebrated since 1987, & growing in significance & impact, every year
· Windrush Day – inaugurated in 2019. re. the contribution of black immigrants to the UK, post WWII
· Stephen Lawrence Day – inaugurated in 2019, re. the destructive, blighting impact of racism, at various levels, and the initiatives to counter such blights.
And then there are local initiatives.
· Every local history project involves local BBC Radio, promoting the launch & the impact of the project. Eg. In October 2019, Garry Stewart was on BBC Radio Gloucester's Jon Smith show, talking about the Stories of Omission project, and Black soldiers in HM armed services. Consequently, the BBC websites also carry the story, with online links to similar stories/projects. Often local newspapers carry the stories too. [see strong rooms newspaper article of me & martin]
· At the launch of Maureen Cottle’s Windrush exhibition, at Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre, on 5th October 2019, the Lord Mayor, Linda Bigham, talked of how crucial the black & Asian presence is to Coventry & how, with 2021just around the corner, we want to showcase Coventry’s multicultural community.
· Let’s hope that the content of the local history books will also showcase this presence.
· And with the 2022 Commonwealth Games, coming to Bham, there’s a similar opportunity for the UK’s 2nd city.
· A good starting point would be reprints of the 1994 book by the Laytons, and the 2008 and 2010 books by Barbara Willis-Brown and her Scawdi team. I was lucky to read these, and you can see the impact they had on me.
· Initiatives to encourage contributions to the local history archives is the way forward.
· Promoting the procedures for staging local exhibitions at libraries, etc. is the way forward.
· If the material is there, it is harder to ignore, omit & erase.
But a big mistake I made was to assume that provision would occur because local authorities would want to be inclusive. But funding cuts has drastically affected this. In addition, I’ve realized that many well-meaning white people are hesitant to make reference to black history, for fear of being “another white voice stomping over black experiences.”
To the hesitant, I say, Black History is for anyone & everyone who is prepared to be sensitive & considerate. It's not about pigmentation.
Thank you for listening!
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