Long, long ago, BC (Before Coronavirus), I travelled to Plymouth to be interviewed by Professor Alice Roberts for Channel 4's Britain's Most Historic Towns episode, Elizabethan Plymouth. This is airing tomorrow (Saturday 28th November 2020) night at 8.30pm on Channel 4, and will be available to watch online afterwards here. I was in the city for two days, but have no idea how much and which parts of the footage filmed will make the final cut!

​We were mostly talking about Sir Francis Drake, as well as the wider geopolitical context of the Elizabethan era, but I did my best to get some Black Tudors stories in there. Besides Diego, who brokered Drake's alliance with the Panama Maroons in 1573 and sailed (but sadly died) on his circumnavigation voyage 1577-1580; Maria, the woman he captured from the Spanish but then abandoned heavily pregnant on an Indonesian island; and the other Africans that sailed with him, there were also a number of other Africans living in Elizabethan Plymouth, whose baptisms and burials are listed in the registers of St. Andrew's Church, which it was exciting to set foot in for the first time! (You can read all about them in Chapter 3 of Black Tudors, and the recently added entry on Diego in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

We filmed at the Royal Citadel, which is on the site of an earlier fort built by Drake in the 1590s, where it was a challenge to try to summarise the challenges facing Elizabeth I when she came to the throne in 1558 in less than a minute, on  a very windy and wet citadel wall (lucky I wore my raincoat and wellies). The next day, we headed to Buckland Abbey, near Yelverton, about 20 mins drive north of the city, which Drake purchased in 1581, having stolen a fortune from the Spanish on his voyage round the world.

I had already visited Buckland as part of my work with the Colonial Countryside project, which led to Diego and Maria featuring in their World Encompassed exhibition in 2018. I'm excited to read the creative writing by Ayanna Gillian Lloyd and local schoolchildren inspired by this story that will be published next year as part of the project. I hadn't been able to visit the exhibition at the time, so it was fantastic to see the mid 20th century Pym mural which depicts Drake's route round the world-and Alice very kindly made this little video of me telling the story of the voyage through a Black Tudors lens:

Anyway, I hope you're able to tune in  tomorrow (Saturday 28th November 2020) night at 8.30pm on Channel 4, or are able to watch online afterwards here. Would love to hear your thoughts on the programme so do comment below, or get involved on Twitter @MirandaKaufmann #HistoricTowns, where I will be live-tweeting during the episode!

We had so many excellent proposals for our What’s Happening in Black British History? Transnational Workshop earlier this month that we have decided to arrange a second event, the What’s Happening in Black British History? Transnational Workshop II, which will be held online via Zoom on Wednesday 25th November 2020. It's a FREE to attend, full day event- running from 11.30am- 6pm, though again sadly not followed by the usual Drinks Reception - though again I could be persuaded to have a chat and a drink over Zoom with anyone who's keen after the formal proceedings are over!

The day will start with a panel looking at Education and Public Engagement from a wide variety of angles. First Yvonne Sinclair, a former Head of History, who now lectures trainee teachers, will give us an insight into her current PhD research comparing how enslavement is taught in both England and Jamaica.  Then we'll hear from Carina Ancell and Alan Kunna about how they have explored the topic at Newham Sixth Form College in East London with their students using the Hutchison Family of  the Gold Coast and Britain as a case study. 
Education doesn't end when we leave school of course so the next two presentations will look at engaging museum and local community audiences with Black British History. Susanna Jorek will talk about Processes of Decolonization in Museums in Germany and the UK, with a particular focus on Bristol Museums; and then we will hear how  Tony Kalume of Diversity Lewes has been Celebrating African Caribbeans in Sussex Past And Present.

After lunch Gretchen Gerzina, author of Black London and presenter of BBC Radio 4 documentary Britain's Black Past will tell us about her new edited collection of essays also entitled Britain's Black Past, which presents a dazzling range of new research and projects from some of the stars of the field (including our own Michael Ohajuru writing about his John Blanke Project), many of whom have presented at previous WHBBH events.  You can feast your eyes on the contents page here. 

Next, we'll be hearing about Digital Humanities and Databases. Charles R. Foy will tell us all about his 
Black Mariner Database, with a special focus on the over 1,700 British Black mariners included therein, and the 'anxious Atlantic' world they had to navigate (Charles also has a chapter about this in the new book, Britain's Black Past, edited by Gretchen Gerzina). Katy Roscoe will talk about her database of over 2500 prisoners incarcerated on Cockatoo island, Sydney's most notorious 19th century prison, some of whom were of African origin.

Then Daniel Domingues will present his Visualizing Abolition Project, which maps the suppression of the trade in enslaved Africans by tracing nearly 31,000 records of correspondence exchanged between the British Foreign Office and British commissioners, ministers, naval officers, and representatives of foreign governments around the world over the course of the nineteenth century. 
           
The final session will be on the theme of Art and Culture. This September, British-American artist Melissa Hill added an image to an existing mural of 'three regular medieval guys chilling' in The Shambles, at the heart of the medieval town of Sevenoaks, Kent.  Motivated by BLM protests in towns across Kent, she wanted to raise the question of how far back one might have found a Black presence in the town. She will reflect on shaking up the imagination of historical possibility in a rural English town. Then Mark McCarthy will explore the depiction of Black Loyalists in Benjamin West’s 'Allegory of Britannia', which in what Simon Schama has called 'an outrageously self-serving fiction', shows a bountiful Britain compensating those who had fought for her during the American War of Independence. Finally Australian art historian Alice Proctor, author of The Whole Picture: The colonial story of the art in our museums & why we need to talk about it, who has been leading Uncomfortable Art Tours of London's leading museums and galleries for several years will talk about Discomfort: Truth and Representation in British Galleries. 

Really hope you can join us for what looks to be a really thought provoking and invigorating day. It's FREE to attend and you can find the booking form and full agenda here.  

If you can't make it, we'll be live-tweeting @BlackBritHist #WHBBH_TN2 throughout the day, and the recordings will be made available after the event. 

​In an autumn in which it feels there's not a lot to look forward to, I'm excited about the What’s Happening in Black British History? Transnational Workshop, which will be held online via Zoom on Wednesday 14th October 2020. It's a full day event- running from 10.30am- 6pm, though sadly not followed by the usual Drinks Reception - though I could be persuaded to have a chat and a drink over Zoom with anyone who's keen after the formal proceedings are over!

We're opening with a panel on Political Activism and transnational solidarity, which will provide some much-needed long term context for the events of this summer.  In chronological order, we will start over a hundred years ago with David Killingray speaking about the events leading up to and following on from the first Pan-African Conference in London in 1900, in his paper on ‘Early pan-African endeavours in the black Atlantic world, 1890-1912’; followed by Kesewa John explaining the role of Caribbean activists in Britain in the anti-imperialist activism of the 1930s in ‘Militant Diaspora: The International African Service Bureau and the Caribbean Labour Rebellions’. Then Ellie Kramer-Taylor will take up the story as she speaks about ‘The West Indian Federation and the Caribbean diaspora in Britain’, in the 1950s and 1960s.

After a break, we will then be able to benefit from the silver lining that online events allow us to hear from speakers from around the world and welcome Shireen Mushtaq, Aiman Iqbal and Arooba Ali from Kinnaird College for Women, in Lahore, Pakistan, who will present on 'Racism as structural violence: The case of British African-Caribbean People’ during the Cold War period,  before Robin Bunce ends the session with his discussion of ‘Black Sections in the Labour Party 1983-7: Apartheid, Colonialism and understandings of anti-racism in Britain’. I'm sure I'll learn a lot as the 20th century is 'not my period', and I hope the themes of this panel will help us to learn lessons from the past as we continue to fight racism today. 

After lunch (of your choice!), we can tuck into our regular New Books panel. There are so many great new Black British History books out there at the moment, so much so that we won't have time to highlight all of them (but keep an eye on our Twitter @BlackBritHist). We are thrilled to be hearing about these exciting new titles:

• 100 Great Black Britons by Patrick Vernon & Angelina Osbourne 
• Journeys: The Story of Migration to Britain by Dan Lyndon-Cohen
• Henry Box Brown: From Slavery to Show Business by Kathleen Chater

And although they can't be with us on the day, we will hear from Kadie Kanneh-Mason, who will be discussing House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons with  ​Shirley J. Thompson OBE  and David Olusoga, who spoke to me about the new version of his book for young people Black and British: A Short, Essential History (for every copy sold, 50p will go to The Black Curriculum). 

The final session will be devoted to  Representing Black Women. It is  fantastic that after six years of featuring Sarah Forbes Bonetta on our publicity material, we are finally having a talk about her, entitled ‘Girl/Ship: Challenging Geographic, Historical, and Formal Historical Methods in Black British Studies’, by Samantha Pinto, whose new book, Infamous Bodies: Early Black Women’s Celebrity and the Afterlives of Rights, explores her life alongside other 'celebrity' historical figures: Phillis Wheatley, Sally Hemings, Sarah Baartman,  and Mary Seacole, who is the subject of  Jordan Harris's paper ‘Claiming Mary Seacole’. Harris will compare how Seacole is seen in Jamaica, the country of her birth, with her status in Britain, asking 'what exactly makes Seacole British, and who has the right to claim her as a national symbol?' Finally, Jeff Bowersox will introduce us to 'Josephine Morcashani: A Briton Performing Black Femininity on Stages across Europe’, an entertainer who was something of a celebrity in her day (1870-1929), but is now largely unknown.  This will allow for a fascinating conversation on who we remember and why, and how women specifically have been represented, or represented themselves. 

Really hope you can join us for what looks to be a really thought provoking and invigorating day. You can find the booking form and full agenda here. 

If you can't make it, we'll be live-tweeting @BlackBritHist #WHBBH_TN throughout the day, and the recordings will be made available after the event. 

This CFP is also available in Welsh.

Following the success of our previous events in London, Liverpool, Bristol, Preston, Huddersfield and Leicester, we would like to invite you to the twelfth of the Black British History Workshops (WHBBHXII), which will be held at Bangor University in North Wales on Thursday 30th April 2020. The Institute of Commonwealth Studies is delighted that the event will continue to be co-sponsored by our fellow institute at the School of Advanced Study, the Institute of Historical Research.
 
The aim of the series is to foster a creative dialogue between researchers, educationalists (mainstream and supplementary), artists and writers, archivists and curators, and policy makers. It seeks to identify and promote innovative new research into the history of people of African origin or descent in the UK and facilitate discussion of the latest developments in the dissemination of Black British history in a wide variety of settings including the media, the classroom and lecture hall, and museums and galleries, thus providing an opportunity to share good practice.
 
We welcome proposals for papers and presentations on a wide variety of themes relating to the history of people of African origin or descent in the UK. As we will be in Wales, proposals relating to Black Welsh History are particularly welcome.
 
We would be delighted to hear from researchers, educationalists, archivists and curators or others interested in offering a presentation, lasting for 15-20 minutes. Please submit a title and a brief description of your presentation (no more than 300 words) as an attached Word document also stating your name, contact details, and, if you have them, Institution and Twitter handle to Professor Philip Murphy at [email protected] by Monday 16th March 2020.
 
In addition, we would be happy to consider proposals for a complete panel. The panel should have a coherent unifying theme, and the proposal should include the abstracts of three related presentations and the names and affiliations of the presenters. We would also be very interested in providing A-level students, undergraduates or graduate students with an opportunity to give presentations on projects relating to Black British History.
 
The day will run from 11am to 6.00pm, followed by a Reception. There will be a registration fee of £24 (£12 for students/unwaged) which includes lunch and refreshments. We are able to offer a small fee and travel bursaries to those speakers without institutional affiliation or support. Please register at https://commonwealth.sas.ac.uk/events.
​

I'm really looking forward to What’s Happening in Black British History? XI, which will be at the University of London on Thursday 14th November 2019. It's a full day event- running from 10am- 6pm, followed by a Drinks Reception. 

We're opening with a special Retrospective session In Memoriam of Ian Duffield and Imtiaz Habib, two pioneers in the field, and supporters of WHBBH, who have sadly passed away in the last year. We're delighted that some of their peers and co-collaborators, Barbara Bush, Audrey Dewjee, Duncan Salkeld and Marika Sherwood are able to join us for a panel discussion to reflect on their work, its impact, and how far Black British History has come since they began their careers. 

Then onto our regular slot highlighting New Publications, where we'll hear about the updated 2nd edition of 
Stephen Bourne's Black Poppies: Britain's Black Community and the Great War; Rodreguez King- Dorset book on Black Classical Musicians and Composers, 1500-2000; Robin Walker's  Black History Matters and the inclusion of 24 New Black Lives in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Following the success of our previous events in London, Liverpool, Bristol, Preston, Huddersfield and Leicester, we would like to invite you to the eleventh of the Black British History Workshops (WHBBHXI), which will be held at Senate House, University of London on Thursday 14th November 2019. The Institute of Commonwealth Studies is happy to announce that the event will be co-hosted by our fellow institute at the School of Advanced Study, the Institute of Historical Research.
 
The aim of the series is to foster a creative dialogue between researchers, educationalists (mainstream and supplementary), artists and writers, archivists and curators, and policy makers. It seeks to identify and promote innovative new research into the history of people of African origin or descent in the UK and facilitate discussion of the latest developments in the dissemination of Black British history in a wide variety of settings including the media, the classroom and lecture hall, and museums and galleries, thus providing an opportunity to share good practice.
 
We welcome proposals for papers and presentations on a wide variety of themes relating to the history of people of African origin or descent in the UK. This time we are particularly interested in featuring Queer Black British History, the role of Food in Black British History, and projects that digitise Black British History, making it more accessible to the public online.
 
We would be delighted to hear from researchers, educationalists, archivists and curators or others interested in offering a presentation, lasting for 15-20 minutes. Please submit a title and a brief description of your presentation either in writing (in which case, of no more than 300 words) or in some other form (for example a clip or podcast) to Dr. Miranda Kaufmann at [email protected] by Monday 16th September 2019.
 
In addition, we would be happy to consider proposals for a complete panel. The panel should have a coherent unifying theme, and the proposal should include the abstracts of three related presentations and the names and affiliations of the presenters. We would also be very interested in providing A-level students, undergraduates or graduate students with an opportunity to give presentations on projects relating to Black British History.
 
The day will run from 11am to 6.00pm, followed by a Reception. There will be a registration fee of £24 (£12 for students/unwaged) which includes lunch and refreshments. Thanks to new sponsorship from the Institute of Historical Research, we are now able to offer a small fee and travel bursaries to those speakers without institutional affiliation or support, and you can register at https://commonwealth.sas.ac.uk/events/event/20183
​

So, in just under a month, I'll be in Jamestown, Virginia, speaking about Black Tudors at an event on Saturday 10th August programmed to mark the 400th anniversary of the first arrival of Africans in the first English colony in North America, and particularly to honour Angelo, the first named African woman in Virginia. 

Captured during warfare in the Angolan kingdom of Ndongo, Angelo (also referred to as “Angela”) arrived in 1619, just days after the arrival of Virginia’s first documented Africans, described as numbering “20. and odd.” Not much is known about her life in the colony, but her name is recorded in the 1625 “Muster of the Inhabitants of Virginia,” (illustrated above) on loan from The National Archives for the first time in 400 years (so we'll both be crossing the Atlantic!). 

Angelo's story is also being told as part of Jamestown Settlement’s special exhibition “TENACITY: Women in Jamestown and Early Virginia” – a legacy project of the 2019 Commemoration, American Evolution.

The full schedule for the day is listed below. 

In my talk, Before Virginia: Free Africans in Tudor and Stuart England, I'll be explaining that when the first Africans arrived in Virginia in August 1619, there had already been Africans living freely in England for over one hundred years. Just five months previously, a free African sailor, John Anthony of Dover, had set out for Virginia aboard the Silver Falcon. The ship only made it as far as Bermuda, but a few months later, John Anthony successfully petitioned for his wages, and was paid with interest to compensate for the delay.

I''l be showing how his experience, and those of over 300 Africans I've identified living in England between 1500 and 1640, provides a fascinating contrast to the well- established (and yet still contested) narrative of the African experience in Colonial Virginia. I'll be exploring the lives of these Black Tudors and Stuarts; how they came to England, what occupations and relationships they found there and how they were treated by its church, its law courts and its people.

So, if you happen to be in the area that weekend, or know anyone who will be, do come along/spread the word!

You can read more about the event and buy tickets via the Jamestown Settlement website. 

I'm also very excited to visit Historic Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg while I'm there. I'll try to find time to blog again when I get home and tell you all about it...

EVENT DETAILS:

 Finding Angelo: Honoring the First African Women in Virginia

Saturday August 10, 2019 • 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.

9:30 a.m. ○ Check-In/Coffee at the Group Arrivals Atrium, follow the signs at front of museum.
• ROBINS FOUNDATION THEATER •
10 a.m. ○ “Before Virginia: Free Africans in Tudor and Stuart England” morning lecture by Dr. Miranda Kaufmann, senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Dr. Kaufmann is the author of the critically acclaimed book, Black Tudors: The Untold Story, which was shortlisted for both the Wolfson History Prize and the Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding in 2018.
11:10 a.m. ○ “Fugitives Politics, Gender and the World of Seventeenth-Century Angola” lecture by Dr. Jessica Krug, assistant professor of history at George Washington University. A historian of Black politics, imagination, gender and cultural practices, with a particular interest in West Central Africa and maroon societies and Black transnational cultural studies, Dr. Krug is the author of Fugitive Modernities: Kisama and the Politics of Freedom, which is currently a finalist for the Harriet Tubman Book Prize.
12:10 p.m. ○ Lunch on your own or with pre-ordered box lunch.
1:15 p.m. ○ “What’s in a Name” afternoon presentation by Katherine Egner Gruber, special exhibition curator at the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. One of the brains behind Jamestown Settlement’s “TENACITY: Women in Jamestown and Early Virginia” special exhibition, Gruber introduces the historical documents that bear Angelo’s name and explores what they tell us about her world.
1:30 p.m. ○ “Between Two Shores: The Heart of Angela” living-history performance by Valarie Gray Holmes, whose research informs a moving portrayal of “Angela” and her world.
2 p.m. ○ “American Heartbreak: American Memory and Racial Amnesia” presentation by Mark Summers, public historian for Preservation Virginia. Summers situates the commemoration of Jamestown within the civil rights struggle to acknowledge black history, revealing why “Angela’s” story is only now emerging, 400 years after she arrived at Jamestown.
3 p.m. ○ Break and opportunity to view “TENACITY” special exhibition.
3:45 p.m. ○ Panel discussion with the day’s presenters, moderated by Barbara Hamm Lee, executive producer and host of WHRV-FM’s Another View. Book signings by Dr. Miranda Kaufmann, author of Black Tudors, and Dr. Jessica Krug, author of Fugitive Modernities, will follow the panel discussion, with both books available for purchase.
Throughout the Day ○ Interpretive portrait of Angelo created ‘real-time’ by artist Austin Miles, in view of attendees and informed by ongoing presentations. A graduate of VCUarts who was first introduced to murals in 2017 while collaborating on Richmond’s first mural created by and specifically for black girls, Austin’s work embodies her own stories and aims to contribute to the conversation surrounding black female experiences.

It's that time of year again, and I'm really looking forward to What’s Happening in Black British History? X, which will be at the University of Leicester on Thursday 2nd May 2019. It's a full day event- running from 11am- 6pm, followed by a Drinks Reception. 

We'll kick the day off with what is becoming a regular slot: New Books, where we'll get a glimpse of the latest publications in the field. This time we'll be hearing about: Black British History: New Perspectives from the Roman Times to the Present Day, edited by Hakim Adi; Kate Morrison's  A Book of Secrets and Thinking Black: Britain, 1964-1985 by Rob Waters. 

Then we'll move on to hear about the exciting new Archeological Evidence of Africans in Britain. Naoise Mac Sweeney will take us From Carthage to Cornwall to learn about the Africans in Ancient Britain; Mathew Morris - the archeologist who found Richard III's body under a Leicester car park in 2013 - will discuss the evidence for Africans in Roman Leicester. Then Rebecca Redfern from the Museum of London will take us to Medieval London, before Jess Scorrer and Katie Faillace discuss the new findings of North African ancestry amongst the Skeletons of the Mary Rose.

After lunch, we'll be exploring the Dual Heritage Experience in Britain, starting with Liam McCarthy  on the American 'occupation' of Leicester in the Second World War; then Sue Bishop will talk about  Black Caribbean and white British romantic relationships in postwar Leicester; Annabelle Gilmore will discuss Parallels of mixed-race identity in the eighteenth and twenty-first century and Paul Ian Campbell will address the topic through the prism of  local football in Leicester c 1970-2010, with a focus on Cavaliers FC. 

Last, and certainly not least, we'll have our Keynote, delivered by Kennetta Hammond Perry, the Director, of the new Stephen Lawrence Research Centre at De Mortford University in Leicester, followed by Q&A and the usual final reflections session, where we will invite the audience to contribute their thoughts too. 

And the discussion and networking will continue informally at our Drinks Reception - always a highlight!

Really hope you can join us for what looks to be a really thought provoking and stimulating day. You can find the booking form and full agenda here. 

If you can't make it, we'll be live-tweeting @BlackBritHist #WHBBHX throughout the day...