Hello!

It’s been a long time since I posted here! This is because I’ve been devoting all my energies to finishing my next book, Heiresses: Marriage, Inheritance and Caribbean Slavery, which I’m delighted to tell you will be published in September by Oneworld in the UK and Pegasus in the US. In it, I tell the stories of nine women who became enslavers, married in Britain and whose lives connect to key historical people and places we thought we knew. More on that later this year…

Meanwhile, I wanted to tell you about my next public talk, Unlocking the potential of Britain’s country houses to tell imperial stories at the Historical Association Annual Conference in the extremely apt location of Liverpool on Saturday 10th May. This will draw on my years of experience working with country houses, from the survey I did of English Heritage properties’ connections to enslavement and abolition back in 2007, to my role as Lead Historian on the Colonial Countryside Project working with Professor Corinne Fowler and the National Trust. You can see the full talk description below.

For the early-bird discount, you need to book by this Thursday 20th May. So check it out here: https://www.haconference.com/


Hope to see some of you there!


Unlocking the potential of Britain’s country houses to tell imperial stories, Historical Association Annual Conference, Liverpool, Saturday 10th May.

Hundreds of historic houses across the country, be they English Heritage, National Trust or in private hands, have connections to Britain’s colonial past. Some were built or bought by enslavers, East India Company merchants or heiresses to imperial fortunes. Others were bought by men who traded in colonial commodities like sugar, tobacco and coffee, or who profited from administering the Empire or fighting colonial wars. Sometimes enslaved Africans worked in these households. Most collections have imperial objects, from Chinese wallpaper and porcelain to furniture made from Jamaican mahogany.These facts are hardly surprising, but they have become hugely controversial in recent years. How, then, do we use these houses and their collections to explore uncomfortable histories, educate an increasingly ethnically diverse next generation and heal a country divided in its attitudes to its imperial past? Using case studies, Kaufmann seeks to explore these questions and draw on the audience’s expertise, with an extended discussion in the Q&A to think about positive ways forward.

​Applications are now open for the new Miranda Kaufmann Black British History Scholarship at Gladstone’s Library for 2023, and you can apply from now until 31st October. 
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The scholarship – two weeks’ all-inclusive accommodation at Gladstone’s Library, complete with a travel allowance – is to support research into the histories of people of African and/or Caribbean origin or descent in the United Kingdom, making connections between the local and global aspects of British History.

Having researched and promoted #BlackBritishHistory for almost 20 years I know that we can’t understand British History without it, and that it is more important now than ever in the fight against racism. Co-convening the "What's Happening in Black British History?" workshops at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies since 2014 with Michael Ohajuru and Philip Murphy has highlighted to me that a lot of the best research in the field has been taking place outside the academy and that this research – which has real world ramifications – is not receiving enough support.

The 2018 Royal Historical Society Race Report demonstrated the need for greater diversity in what is being researched and taught in UK universities, and in the staff and student bodies. Although the situation is improving a little, it’s not happening fast enough. I want to do something, even if it’s a drop in the ocean, to combat these problems. I particularly want to support researchers of colour who often face additional barriers to pursuing a career in History. That is why the Miranda Kaufmann Black British History Scholarship will be exclusively reserved for members of the global majority, and includes an £150 travel grant to aid access.

Through the Gladstone family, the library has its own connections to Black British history and the history of enslavement, making it a peculiarly relevant place to study these subjects. Further research into the Gladstone papers, which include the correspondence and business records of Liverpool merchant Sir John Gladstone, including with his son, Prime Minister William Gladstone, should also yield new insights into the histories of Liverpool’s leading role in the trafficking of enslaved Africans, broader colonial trade, and management of estates in colonial Guyana. The papers include several lists of the names of people enslaved by John Gladstone which will be of interest to researchers trying to trace their lives. 

In recognition of this, it's also great to see the library also offering the new Eileen Stamper Scholarship for the study of historical or contemporary slavery, and that in 2023, their General scholarship will be reserved for the study of Guyana, to mark the 200th anniversary of the Demerara uprising that began on one of the Gladstone’s plantations in August 1823.

Gladstone’s Library, in the pretty village of Hawarden, just over the Welsh border from Chester, is the UK’s only residential library, founded with the collection of Prime Minister William Gladstone, but now with a collection of over 150,000 items. I’ve been a regular visitor since I moved to North Wales and can vouch for it as a lovely place to read and think. It’s also only an hour’s train ride or drive to Liverpool or Manchester, should researchers wish to visit those cities’ archives, libraries and museums during their stay. 

I’m so glad to be able to partner with the library and its amazing staff to support research into Black British History in this way, & look forward to learning from many scholars over the years!

To apply, all you have to do is submit a covering letter, brief CV (no more than 2 pages) and the name and contact details of a referee, by 31st October.

The letter must explain: ​

• Which scholarship you are applying for
• Your specific area of research
• What you hope to achieve during your residency
• Why you are undertaking this residency i.e. PhD, Masters, publication, sabbatical project, private study etc.
• Your preferred dates of study (please include two or three options)

For more information about the full range of scholarships and how to apply, click here.  Good luck!

sI am happy to announce that a new Miranda Kaufmann Black British History Scholarship will be available at Gladstone’s Library from 2023.
​
The scholarship will be for research into the histories of people of African and/or Caribbean origin or descent in the United Kingdom, making connections between the local and global aspects of British History.

The award is for two weeks’ all-inclusive accommodation at Gladstone’s Library, complete with a travel allowance.

Gladstone’s Library, in the pretty village of Hawarden, just over the Welsh border from Chester, is the UK’s only residential library, founded with the collection of Prime Minister William Gladstone, but now with a collection of over 150,000 items. I’ve been a regular visitor since I moved to North Wales and can vouch for it as a lovely place to read and think.

Through the Gladstone family, the library has its own connections to Black British History and the history of enslavement, making it a peculiarly appropriate place to study these subjects. In recognition of this, the library also offers the Eileen Stamper Scholarship for the study of historical or contemporary slavery, and in 2023, the General scholarship will be reserved for the study of Guyana, to mark the 200th anniversary of the Demerara uprising that began on one of the Gladstone’s plantations in August 1823.

I’m so glad to be able to support research into Black British History in this way, & look forward to learning from many scholars over the years!

For more information about the scholarships and how to apply, click here.

As I live in North Wales, I'm particularly excited that following the success of our previous events in London, Liverpool, Bristol, Preston, Huddersfield and Leicester, we will be holding the fourteenth of the What's Happening in Black British History? Workshops (WHBBHXIV), at Bangor University in North Wales on Saturday 14 May.

The event will be focused on Welsh Black History, with a  keynote from Professor Charlotte Williams, OBE, followed by sessions exploring the latest developments in Wales, histories from the Victorian Age through to the interwar years, and artistic and poetic responses. The day will end with a Drinks Reception with music.

It will be great to discover more about Black History in Wales, which is ahead of England in many ways, with the Government making studying Black History in schools compulsory and commissioning an audit that found that over 200 statues, street names and buildings in the country had connections to enslavement. We'll be hearing about these new developments from our keynote speaker, Charlotte Williams, who led the working group to look at how Black history was taught in Welsh schools, Gaynor Legall who led the built environment audit, as well as Peter Alexander on how the Welsh Government's Race Equality Action Plan (REAP) is being implemented in museums. 

We'll also be learning some Welsh Black histories including about the Congo House school for Africans in Victorian Colwyn Bay, Attitudes of the Welsh in America to African Americans during Reconstruction, 1865-77, and Black sailors boarding in Cardiff between 1890 and 1839. And its's going to be great to explore artistic and poetic responses to these histories. I'm particularly looking forward to hearing about what's been going on at the National Trust's Penrhyn Castle, which you should definitely try and visit while you're here as it's only ten minutes from the university. I got to know it through the Colonial Countryside project, as the family were enslavers in Jamaica.

On that note, I would highly recommend you make a weekend of your trip to Wales as there's so many beautiful landscapes, such as Snowdonia National Park, and historic buildings -especially castles (including the one where they film I'm a Celebrity) - to explore!  There's also surfing and zipwires galore for the adrenaline junkies amongst you! I know that many southerners think North Wales is remote but in fact you can get to Bangor by train in 3 hours from London or Birmingham, 2 hours from Manchester, or 1.5 hours from Liverpool. When you see the full Agenda, I'm sure you'll agree that it'll be worth the trip - and think of all the reading - maybe some of those titles that have been on your list since our Books event last year - you could get done on the train! Or if you prefer driving with an audiobook, there are some gorgeous places you could break the journey at, check out Visit Wales for accommodation options.

Check out the full agenda- in English and Cymraeg below, and then head to the Registration page to book your ticket! 

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

​Hope to see many of you there!

I am incredibly disappointed that the MA in Black British History at Goldsmiths, University of London, the only taught course of its kind in the country, which only launched  in 2019, is at risk of closure, as Goldsmiths has put its lecturers Christienna Fryar & Hannah Elias at risk of redundancy. Their actions are in direct opposition to Goldsmiths’ publicly stated goals on diversity and racial justice.

Yesterday I and the other convenors of What’s Happening in Black British History? sent the letter below to Warden Frances Corner, Dinah Caine, Chair of Goldsmiths Council; Elisabeth Hill, Pro-Warden Academic; David Oswell, Pro-Warden Research and Matthew Cragoe, Acting Head of the School of Culture and Society, urging them to save this important new MA course and the jobs of the two excellent scholars who teach it.
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Please circulate and add your voices, for example by adding a comment to the post on our website here: https://blackbritishhistory.co.uk/2022/save-the-black-british-history-ma/


OPEN LETTER TO GOLDSMITHS TO SAVE ITS BLACK BRITISH HISTORY MA

Dear Warden Frances Corner, Council and Senior Management Team at Goldsmiths,

Save the Black British History MA at Goldsmiths

We, the convenors of What’s Happening in Black British History? at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, are writing to urge you to reconsider your plans that have placed at risk the Black British History MA and the jobs of its lecturers Dr. Christienna Fryar and Dr. Hannah Elias.
Like many people across the sector were delighted when the Black British History MA, the only taught course of its kind in the country, was launched at Goldsmiths in 2019, and saw it as an important contribution to addressing some of the problems outlined in the Royal Historical Society’s 2018 Race, Ethnicity and Equality Report.
Offering the Black British History MA is clearly vital for:

• Contributing to a proper understanding of British History
• Enabling the next generation of university and school teachers to teach a subject they themselves were not taught at school or university
• Improving the diversity of the student body
• Forwarding the fight for racial justice

Indeed, the urgency and significance of this initiative have been powerfully set out in your own public statements over the last few years.

The removal of the Black British History MA is in direct opposition to Goldsmiths’ publicly stated goals on diversity and inclusion and aim to recruit a more diverse student body. You claim to be ‘passionate about advancing equality and celebrating diversity at Goldsmiths’ and that ‘these values are enshrined throughout our rich history, entrenched in the subject matter of our research and teaching, and embraced by members of our community.’ In 2019 you made commitments on racial justice, which included support for decolonising the curriculum and pledging to ring fence £20,000 a year for Black History events for Goldsmiths Students’ Union. In 2020, Warden Frances Corner made ‘a personal pledge to ‘work tirelessly to bring about change.’
When the MA was launched in 2019, Goldsmiths itself, and the former Head of History Dr. John Price made it clear they understood its value. In the press release Dr. John Price said: “The Department of History is absolutely committed to the exciting new MA in Black British History and to widening the fields of history that we teach at both postgraduate and undergraduate levels.

It is a quite extraordinary act of reputational harm that less than three years after you proudly announced that you had recruited Dr Christienna Fryar, a ‘leading academic on the history of emancipation, the British Empire, and the Caribbean’ to convene the course, with a permanent contract, her job is now at risk and she has been forced to reapply for it.

You have ignored protests over the last six months including a letter denouncing the move now signed by almost 5,000 academics, researchers and artists including Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo, former Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, and leading historians of Black British History Professor David Olusoga, Professor Olivette Otele. Leading History organizations such as the Royal Historical Society and History UK have also spoken out against this move.

What’s Happening in Black British History? convened by Dr. Miranda Kaufmann, Michael Ohajuru and Professor Philip Murphy at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies has been promoting the study, discussion and dissemination of this vital subject since 2014, organising two major events a year. We have held events in London, Liverpool, Bristol, Huddersfield, Preston, Leicester, and hosted over 150 scholars, artists, writers and heritage professionals as speakers to over 600 attendees. The substantial national audience for our events and social media output shows the interest in and importance of the subject. We were commended for our work in the Royal Historical Society’s 2018 Race, Ethnicity and Equality Report.
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We add our own voices to the growing chorus of individuals and organisations across the sector urging you to reconsider your approach. We fear that unless you are prepared to make a pledge to protect the Black British History MA, and to lift the threat of redundancy from Dr. Christienna Fryar and Dr. Hannah Elias the reputation of Goldsmiths will suffer immense damage, besides depriving young people of a currently unique opportunity to study this vital subject.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Miranda Kaufmann, Michael Ohajuru and Professor Philip Murphy
Convenors of What’s Happening in Black British History? at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London

It's that time of year when we like to look back and forward at once (like Janus!), and as I haven't blogged much for a while I thought I'd round up some of what I've been up to, and exciting things planned for the coming year.

The biggest achievement of 2021 was working hard to create my FutureLearn Black Tudors course, which over 4,800 people have now signed up to. If you want to learn more about Africans in Tudor and early Stuart England, explore the original documents recording their lives, hear from a range of experts, and join the debate yourself, why not enrol for FREE now? Read all about it in this blog from July.  There are some other great FutureLearn Black History courses too- I would recommend the Black Curriculum's Teaching Black British History course and the new Country Houses and the British Empire course designed by my director on the Colonial Countryside Project, Professor Corinne Fowler. FutureLearn is looking to expand its coverage in this area, so do let me/them know what courses you'd like to see/who should write them!

The ‘What’s Happening in Black British History?’ series I co-organise with Michael Ohajuru and Philip Murphy at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies went virtual for WHBBH Books in April 2021. You can read more about the event here, or catch up on the recordings here. We are now reviewing proposals for #WHBBHXIV, which will be the 14th workshop since we began the series back in 2014. As I live in North Wales, I’m excited that the event will be held at Bangor University on Saturday 14th May 2022 – save the date!

I've continued to work on my Teaching Black Tudors project to get the history of Africans in Early Modern England into the classroom. In October OUP published a new 'How Can We Find Out about the lives of Black Tudors?' enquiry, which you can download via Kerboodle. I gave a History Masterclass on Africans in Tudor and Stuart Westminster for Westminster Abbey, sadly this was virtual, but the silver lining is that you can watch the lecture and the Q&A online. It was exciting to see BBC Bitesize add a learner guide to Africans and their lives in Tudor England in November. In 2022, Hodder will be publishing a more comprehensive set of Black Tudors teaching resources, so watch this space!

My interest in getting Black British History into the classroom more generally, which I blogged about at length, with a list of practical suggestions, back in late 2020, led to several invitations in 2021. Highlights, which were recorded, so you can still watch online, were discussing "Should we decolonise education?" with Professor Kehinde Andrews for the CogX festival in June, and joining a panel organised by OUP on "Diversifying Your History Curriculum" with Janice Mansel-Chan, Emily Folorunsho and Aaron Wilkes  in November.   
 
I was delighted to be one of the judges for the 100 Great Black Britons Schools Competition, and am looking forward to assessing the entries for the Gallery of Living History Schools Competition this week. The winner will be announced at the end of January, and their design for ‘an artwork/statue that celebrates and commemorates an unsung person or people, living or dead, whose heroic story has never been properly told’ will be unveiled as part of the Coventry City of Culture celebrations in May.

I’ve been trying to avoid writing articles in order to focus on my Heiresses: The Caribbean Marriage Trade book, but I did take advantage of the hullabaloo around the casting of Jodie Turner-Smith as Anne Boleyn in the Channel 5 drama in June to draw attention to the real history of Africans in Tudor England. I was interviewed by several radio stations, as well as writing a piece in The Telegraph: Yes, there were black Tudors – and they lived fascinating lives. My only other publication in 2021 was this brief article on Africans in Britain, 1500-1800 for the Oxford African American Studies Center –which I hope provides a useful summary and further reading recommendations signposting the classics plus exciting new scholarship in the field.

 I was interviewed for EPOCH magazine by Sophie Merrix, who excitingly is researching Black Stuarts for her PhD at Lancaster University, and as part of An Introduction to African and Afro-Diasporic Peoples and Influences in British Literature and Culture before the Industrial Revolution, an online open textbook published by Affordable Learning Georgia, with support from Savannah State University, which also features an interview with Dr. Onyeka Nubia. 
​ 
After my experiences working with the National Trust as Lead Historian on the Colonial Countryside Project since 2018, I’ve been dismayed to see the ongoing biased and negative coverage of the National Trust’s Colonialism and Slavery Report which was published in September 2020. I was happy to speak to journalist Sam Knight about it all, and he published a refreshingly accurate piece in the New Yorker in August which is the best account I’ve read of the story – recommended reading!

I’ve done a few podcast interviews you might want to listen to: I spoke to Dr. Sam Willis for the Mariner's Mirror podcast about Africans in Tudor and Stuart Port Towns, and to Ryan Latto about Peter the Moor and other Africans at the Scottish Court on his Unearthed podcast, and to Moya Lothian MacClean about Elizabethan slaver John Hawkins on her Human Resources podcast series. I also spoke with Michael Ohajuru and Gretchen Gerzina about John Blanke’s portrait in the Westminster Tournament Roll for the Black Presence in British Portraiture podcast; the network also has a Facebook page for anyone interested in portraits of Africans in British Art.

​It’s only while sitting down to write this that I’ve realised how much I actually did in 2021! I’ll end with a plea not to ask me to take on any new projects in 2022- I need to put all my energies into finishing writing my Heiresses: The Caribbean Marriage Trade book, which I hope will be published in 2023.
 
I hope you all have a happy and fulfilling year ahead, here's some things to to look forward to in 2022:

• ‘What’s Happening in Black British History? XIV’- Saturday 14th May at Bangor University
• Unveiling of the Gallery of Living History winning artwork in Coventry – May 2022
• Launch of Hodder Black Tudors teaching resources – 2022 date tbc
• and remember, the FREE online 6-week FutureLearn Black Tudors course is available to start anytime!

As I live in North Wales, I'm really excited that, following the success of our previous events in London, Liverpool, Bristol, Preston, Huddersfield and Leicester, we will be holding the fourteenth of the What's Happening in Black British History? Workshops (WHBBHXIV), at Bangor University in North Wales on Saturday 14 May 2022!

As regular readers will know, 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.

The workshop in Bangor was originally scheduled for April 2020, but the COVID-19 crisis obliged us to postpone it. As a consequence, we have already received a number of proposals and we are currently confirming arrangements with the authors. But we are still keen to attract some additional presentations for the rescheduled workshop on 14 May. There will be a strong local focus to the event, so we are specifically seeking proposals for presentations examining some aspect of the Welsh dimension of Black history. 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 17 January 2022.

You can see the full Call for Papers here.  

There's so much fascinating Black Welsh History out there, to give some North Wales examples: 18th century gardener John Ystmyllyn, who since I first encountered him now has an entry in the ODNB and a rose named after him; the Congo House school for Africans in Victorian Colwyn Bay, or boxer Randolph Turpin's time training at Gwrych Castle (now more famous as the site of ITV's I'm a Celebrity...) in 1951. I can't wait to find out more!

I am SO EXCITED to tell you all about the new Black Tudors course I've created with FutureLearn and a wonderful team of expert contributors!

Since writing my book, Black Tudors: The Untold Story (2017), I've continued my quest to bring the fascinating stories of the Africans who lived in Tudor England to the widest possible audience, particularly through giving my Black Tudors: Three Untold Stories talk in multiple locations, and working with teachers and educational publishers on my Teaching Black Tudors project... but this is taking it to another level!

The course is FREE to take, 6 weeks long (with about 4 hours of study a week) and is available to start anytime from Monday 12th July.

You'll meet a host of fascinating individuals, who some of you may remember from my book, including John Blanke, royal trumpeter to Henry VII and Henry VIII; Jacques Francis, a salvage diver on the wreck of the Mary Rose, Diego, who sailed the world with Francis Drake, and many more including a porter, a prince, a sailor, a prostitute and a silk weaver.

But this time, I'll be showing you the original documents that record these Black lives, and asking you to join the debate amongst historians about their true significance of the varied experiences of Black Tudors in the wider narrative of Black History, the long-standing Black presence in Britain, the origins of racial prejudice and enslavement and what it all means today.  You will be able to formulate your own evidence-based arguments and discuss with fellow learners throughout the course. 

I'm delighted that a number of experts I really admire have contributed to the course. From leading historians in the field of Black British History, to bright young things from the next generation of scholars, you’ll hear from them in video content each week. We have… drumroll please…

• David Olusoga, Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester, BAFTA award-winning TV presenter and producer, and the author of Black and British: A Forgotten History to help us situate Black Tudor History in its broader context.

 

• Michael Ohajuru, Renaissance art historian, founder of the John Blanke Project, guide to the Image of the Black in London Galleries, and my colleague at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, where we co-curate the What's Happening in Black British History? workshop series, to discuss John Blanke, the Westminster Tournament of 1511, and images of Africans in European Art.

 

• Kevin Dawson, Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Merced, author of Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Cultures in the African Diaspora and experienced free diver, whose work examines Early Modern Atlantic African swimming, underwater diving and more, to talk about Jacques Francis, and the mechanics of Tudor salvage diving.

 

• Cassander Smith, Associate Professor of English at the University of Alabama, author of Black Africans in the British Imagination: English Narratives of the Early Atlantic World, specializing in early Black Atlantic literature and culture, to look at the lives of Prince Dederi Jacquoah and Diego, situating them in the wider stories of Tudor Trade with Africa and conflict with Spain in the Americas.

 

• Montaz Marche, writer, theatre director and PhD researcher at Birmingham University looking at the lives of Black women in 18-20th century Britain to explore the lives of African women in Tudor and early Stuart England.

 

• Wendy Lennon, Founder of ‘Shakespeare, Race & Pedagogy’, Fellow of the English Association, English teacher and postgraduate researcher at the Shakespeare Institute in Birmingham to give us an insight into the latest scholarship in the English Literature field, and discuss the pros and cons of using fiction to fill the gaps in the archival records.

 

• Sophie Merrix, PhD student at Lancaster University, Early Modern History editor at Epoch magazine,  studying and mapping the lives of Africans in Stuart England, to provide us with some brilliant maps showing the locations of Africans as they appear in records across England.

It is also quite thrilling that talented actors Paterson Joseph and Honey Gabriel are the narrators for the short videos scattered throughout the course which introduce you to each of the African individuals from the book. 

The FutureLearn format makes it all so accessible in bite-size steps, with great quality images and video content, as well as links to other outstanding online content – it's been brilliant to be able to share so much of this that didn't make it into the book or is brand-new. I'm so grateful to FutureLearn and the learning design team at Online Education Services for making this happen!

So, if you can't get enough of Black Tudors, want to do a deep dive into the archives; take a guided tour of all the latest scholarship; and discuss it all with like-minded individuals, this is the place to be!

You can enrol for FREE now to take the 6 week course at: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/black-tudors
 
And, if you haven't already, buy a copy of my book, Black Tudors: The Untold Story, also available on Kindle and Audible, which will be a great accompanying text for the course. 

And talk about the course on social media using the hashtag #FLBlackTudors

Really looking forward to our next What’s Happening in Black British History? event which will be all about Books and Publishing! It will be held online via Zoom on Thursday 29th April. It's a FREE to attend, full day event- running from 10am- 6.30pm, and you can register here. To aid informal networking we are scheduling breakout rooms throughout the day and will be encouraging you to stay online after the formal proceedings end at 5.30pm to have a chat and a drink. This will also be when we announce the winner of the “What’s your Favourite Black British History book?” competition, in partnership with Black British Music,  which we’ll be asking you to nominate anytime from now and during the day using the hashtag  #WHBBHBooks.
 
As ever, we have a fantastic line-up of speakers for you, and we are going for shorter presentations so that there’s more discussion time.
 
We’ll get started with Children’s Publishing. There has been some progress in this area, as 10% of children’s books featured ethnic minority characters in 2019, compared with just 4% in 2017. But only 5% of these had ethnic minority main characters; which is just not good enough when we consider that over 30% of primary school children are from a minority ethnic background. You can read more details in the CLPE’s Reflecting Realities surveys. There is also the issue that between 2007 and 2017, fewer than 2% of all authors and/or illustrators of children’s books published in the UK were British people of colour. But there are reasons for optimism, including the Book Trust Represents project, and their #PassthePen initiative and the Scholastic Voices series. The panel will be chaired by the wonderful Catherine Johnson, who spoke to us at WHBBH3 back in 2015. She has authored several books for young people with Black British protagonists, including Hero, A Nest of Vipers, Sawbones and Freedom and is currently working on a TV drama series based on Black Tudors! He latest book, Queen of Freedom, which tells the story of Nanny of the Maroons, had just been shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize. She’ll be speaking to Kandace Chimbiri, also an author of Black history books for children (Secrets of the Afro Comb, 6,000 Years of Art and Culture, The Story of Early Ancient Egypt, Step Back in Time to Ancient Kush and The Story of the Windrush) who is now writing a prequel to her Windrush book for Scholastic, who will be producing wall charts and teaching resources to accompany both books. Scholastic have also recently published Diver’s Daughter: A Black Tudor story by another of our speakers, writer Patrice Lawrence, who is also on the Jhalak Prize shortlist for Eight Pieces of Silva, which has also been shortlisted for The Bookseller YA Prize. They’ll be joined by S.I. Martin,  museum educator and author of children’s books Jupiter Williams and Jupiter Amidships, as well as Incomparable World which has just been reprinted by Penguin as part of the Black Britain, Writing Back series curated by Bernadine Evaristo. We’ll also hear from Karen Sands-O'Connor, author of Children’s Publishing and Black Britain 1965-2015 and teacher and writer Darren Chetty, a contributor to The Good Immigrant, edited by Nikesh Shukla, who together have authored this series of articles in Books for Keeps examining the way black, Asian and minority ethnic voices have been represented in the English national story, through children’s literature. As you can tell by the length of this paragraph, I’m very excited to hear what they all have to say!
 
Next, we’ll look at the state of play in Educational Publishing. The need to get more Black British History into our classrooms has been a constant refrain at WHBBH events ever since they started back in 2014. I recently blogged on the subject with a list of 19 ideas of how to do so without waiting for the Government to take action. One of the points on the list was to work with educational publishers, so I’m really keen to hear what this panel has to say. Lavinya Stennett, founder of The Black Curriculum will be in the chair. I’m delighted she’ll be joining us as she’s been a driving force in pushing for change in the curriculum, producing this report on Black British History in the National Curriculum; working directly with schools, companies and non-profit organisations, and producing teaching resources including some in collaboration with the TES. We’ll be hearing from teacher and history education consultant Hannah Cusworth, who has worked with Oak Academy, The Historical Association, Schools History Project and BBC Teach, via a pre-recorded video. You can also see some of her TV interviews and newspaper comment pieces here. Joining us on the day will be publishers Janice Mansel-Chan (Oxford University Press) and William Goodfellow (Hodder Education), who are both beginning to include more Black British History in their materials, including the Hodder Teaching Black Tudors resources (coming out later this year)  as well as WHBBH regulars, the wonderful educational consultancy Justice2History duo Abdul Mohamed and Robin Whitburn, who are also authors of several textbooks as well as Doing Justice to History: Transforming Black history in secondary schools. You can revisit some of their previous appearances, and other WHBBH panels on Education here.

After Lunch, we’ll examine Academic Publishing, with Dr. Meleisa Ono-George in the chair. This is of course a vital part of the jigsaw, as new knowledge continues to be exhumed from the archives, but are academic books prohibitively expensive and who gets access to online journals? Dr. Ono-George is a social-cultural historian of race and gender, with a focus on Black women’s histories in Britain and the Anglo-Caribbean and has recently been appointed as an Associate Professor at Queen’s College, Oxford. We'll have a pre-recorded interview with publisher Alison Welsby from Liverpool University Press, who commissioned Britain’s Black Past, edited by Gretchen Gerzina, which features contributions from many of the leading scholars of Black British History, including Chapter 1 on the John Blanke Project by our very own Michael Ohajuru. Then we'll hear from Dr. Kennetta Hammond Perry, author of London is the Place For Me:  Black Britons, Citizenship and the Politics of Race and the Director of the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre at De Montfort University. She was our keynote speaker at WHBBHX in Leicester in 2018, and we’re delighted to welcome her back. Helen Gilmour and Geraldine Richards who publish history journals at Routledge, Taylor and Francis will also bring their perspectives on this important aspect of academic history publishing.
 
Last but certainly not least, we’ll finish the day with a look at what is known in the trade as Trade Publishing, essentially commercial books aimed at ‘the general reader’, an area where last summer saw books by Black British authors topping both the fiction and non-fiction bestseller lists for the first time. Our chair will be Kadija George MBE, literary activist, writer, poet and editor of SABLELitMag, and several anthologies including Write Black, Write British: From Post Colonial to Black British Literature and C3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain (with Courttia Newland). We’ll have a video from Colin Grant, author of Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation, who recently recorded this excellent Thinking Black essay series for BBC Radio 3, launching WritersMosaic, an online platform for new writing from a mosaic of literary voices. Then we’ll hear from historian Robin Walker, ‘The Black History Man’; Patrick Vernon OBE, the co-author with Angelina Osbourne of 100 Great Black Britons and tireless campaigner, most recently in aid of the Windrush generation and part of the #RejectThe Report response to the Sewell report (you can sign the letter, which has over 20,000 signatures already here). Joining them will be editor Hannah Chukwu (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House), who worked with Bernadine Evaristo on the Black Britain, Writing Back series and the #LitinColour project with the Runnymede Trust, and literary agent Natalie Jerome (Aevitas Creative), whose clients include David Harewood and Sir Lenny Henry, and helped found Creative Access, a mentoring and graduate trainee scheme for BAME candidates looking for paid internships across the creative industries and media sector. 
 
After all that, we’ll be encouraging you to fetch a drink of your choice, and join us for the informal chat we miss so much from our IRL Drinks Receptions!
 
Wow, what a day it’s going to be! Really hope you can join us. 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 #WHBBHBooks throughout the day, and the recordings will be made available after the event. 

And don’t forget to nominate your favourite Black British History Book using the hashtag hashtag #WHBBHBooks If you need some inspiration check out this Black British Music video 'Those African Books Go And Read' by Music4Causes with kind support by Prof Paul Gilroy, Prof Lez Henry and Tony Warner Compiled & edited by Kwaku.

In Part 1 of this blog I explained that while the fight for curriculum change must of course continue, I am far too impatient to wait for this Government to have a change of heart and make teaching Black British History mandatory, or for another generation of teachers to become ‘comfortable talking about topics they themselves were taught.’ I highlighted the importance of having a history lesson on the campaign to change history lessons, to allow us to learn from the victories and defeats of the last thirty years, and the need to must combine the passion and energy of young campaigners and a new cohort of innovative young history teachers with the experience and wisdom of stalwarts, whilst considering the many constraints placed upon our teachers and  the importance of having a detailed knowledge of how our schools actually operate.

Following this discussion, below is my list of 19 specific ideas that I have picked up from many conversations over the years as to how we can change things, NOW.

Since I first began drafting this list in July progress in some of these areas have been accelerating, and so I will also be signposting existing initiatives in the relevant areas. However, I am not privy to all of these, so please add things I’ve missed in the comments and I’ll incorporate them.

19 Ways to Get More Black British History into our Classrooms

Information Gathering

1. Build on the Impact of Omission Survey to build a full picture what exactly is currently being taught in schools, and how. Many teachers have begun to make changes in the wake of the events of this summer. It is important to fully map the landscape, both in order to assess the scale of the problem, and to identify examples of best practice to be replicated.

2. We need a clear picture of what changes we want to see. A working group should go through the existing curriculum highlighting places where Black British History can currently be taught (including in other subject areas) with practical suggestions and tips for teachers. This might be a task that could be undertaken by the new Steering Group to review diversity in GCSE and A-Level specifications announced by the Historical Association in October. This survey could go way beyond the Department of Education’s brief list of such opportunities, and draw on the detailed submission made by the BASA Education Committee during the curriculum consultation period in 2013. Another angle here is to use the requirement for a local study: all you need is one local record- such as the baptism of an African in a local church (see for example this searchable dataset for London), and you have a springboard into the subject. There are various ongoing mapping projects that could help with this, including this map of graves and memorials, this one of Frederick Douglass and other African American abolitionists’ speaking tours of Britain; this one by Buzzfeed and Historic England’s Another England, and more references (such as some 400 records of Black Tudors and Stuarts I found during my doctoral research) can be found at your local county archive- a school visit to which would be an educational experience in itself. There are also opportunities to talk about history in other subject areas, such as literature, geography, music and art that could be exploited. The group should also prepare a guide to convincing your school to make these changes.

Training and Recruitment

3. Provide better Initial Teacher Training and Continuing Professional Development. Even were the curriculum to be redrafted, the prospect of teachers being mandated to teach subjects they know little about is quite frankly, terrifying. I’ve heard stories of teachers running classroom “slave auctions”, asking students to get under their desks and pretend they are on a slaving ship, write a ‘slave narrative’ or to write a business plan imagining they are a plantation owner. More benignly, but equally unhelpful and revealing, is the almost ubiquitous focus on 20th century American Black History during British Black History Month. It is vital therefore that teachers learn Black British History themselves, both while studying for their PGCE, and through Continuing Professional Development opportunities such as the TIDE/Runnymede Beacon Fellowships or the Historical Association Teacher Fellowship Programme on Britain and Transatlantic Slavery. There is also scope in the field of online learning platforms to increase coverage of Black British History. This summer Enrich Learning offered a short Black British History course ; FutureLearn currently has courses on Empire: the Controversies of British Imperialism and the History of Slavery in the British Caribbean. For the truly committed, there are now two Masters courses, at Chichester (History of Africa and the African Diaspora) and Goldsmiths (Black British History), both of which can be done part-time, and in the case of Chichester, remotely.​

4. While teachers of all backgrounds need to think about how to teach Black British History, we should work to ensure that schools not only recruit more Black teachers but work to promote them to leadership roles, where a more diverse range of perspectives will help make change. Nick Dennis has recently blogged on how we could apply the Parker Review on Ethnic Diversity of UK boards (2017) to the school setting.

Providing Better Resources

5. Work with Educational publishers of textbooks to similarly diversify their offering. Some of the existing texts need immediate revision. One credits Sir John Hawkins with “inventing the slave trade”- a statement that is both factually inaccurate (the Portuguese initiated the transatlantic trafficking of Africans half a century earlier), and perversely celebratory- another great British first! Some publishers have made public statements of solidarity in the wake of George Floyd’s murder that can be leveraged to persuade them to put their money where their mouth is. For example Hachette have agreed to republish The History of the African and  Caribbean Communities in Britain by Hakim Adi following this video (2.5K views) and this petition (999 signatures). Similarly, after pressure on Twitter, Routledge has issued Imtiaz Habib’s Black Lives in the English Archives in paperback, making it available at the price of £29.99 as opposed to the previously prohibitive £120 hardback. New titles should also be commissioned, and some publishers are beginning to take steps in the right direction, such as Pearson Education, who are working with Stephen Bourne (author of Black Poppies: Britain's Black Community and the Great War) to create a new KS2 resource.

6. Work to distribute the latest books to schools. It is often said that one barrier to teaching new topics in school is the cost of buying new books. Publishers should do more to make sure their books are getting to the students that would most benefit from them; whilst school librarians should push for them to be prioritised. Besides textbooks for specific courses such as the Migration GCSE module and the African Kingdoms A level option, there are a growing number of Black British History books aimed at school-age children. Amongst the books every school should have are the children's version of David Olusoga's Black and British: A Short Essential History  (which brilliantly donates 50p to the Black Curriculum for every copy purchased); Angelina Osbourne and Patrick Vernon's 100 Great Black Britons (there is currently a GoFundMe campaign to send a copy to every secondary school in the country; please support if you can, or if you''re a teacher, you can request a copy for your school here); Hakim Adi's The History of the African and  Caribbean Communities in Britain; Stephen Bourne's Black Poppies: Britain's Black Community and the Great War; Kandace Chimbiri's The Story of Windrush; Floella Benjamin's Coming to England; Dan Lyndon's Journeys: The Story of Migration to Britain; and Shirley Anstis's Black British Members of Parliament in the House of Commons: 22 Stories of Passion, Achievement and Success - and I'm sure many more (please add suggestions in the comments so I can incorporate them- we may need a separate reading list!). Schools could also read fiction titles with Black British themes such as those by S.I. Martin and Catherine Johnson and the new Scholastic Voices series. This allows history to get into the classroom under cover of literacy, a tactic I discussed with my sister, a primary school teacher, here. 

7. Provide high quality free online teaching resources. There are many of these already out there, and the Institute of Historical Research Library has recently gathered many together here, and is still collecting others via this form. The TES has recently launched a new hub for black British History resources, though they look far from very comprehensive at present. Examples of the high quality recent resources out there include the Runnymede Trust’s Our Migration Story; England's Immigrants 1330–1550; the TIDE Project (Travel, Transculturality, and Identity in England, c. 1550 – 1700); and the Bernie Grant Trust Marginalised No More project. 

Change from below

8. Establish closer relationships between historians and school teachers. I’ve found the #historyteacher hashtag on Twitter and the History Teachers’ Book Club to be great ways to engage with an online community of enthusiastic history teachers. More traditionally, there are two major teaching conferences each year run by the Historical Association and the Schools History Project where teachers share ideas. It was exciting to see a diverse range of topics on both of their 2020 agendas (HA conference; SHP conference). The Historical Association also has two teaching magazines, Teaching History and Primary History with wide readerships. My own Teaching Black Tudors project started two years ago after I tweeted about the idea. I got a big response, ran a workshop, gathered lesson plans and schemes of work (a term I learnt along the way!) and we are now working with a leading educational publisher to enhance and distribute the resources. Interest has grown from the initial 20 or so teachers who attended the workshop in 2018 to some 700 people signed up to the project mailing list. This is a way of working that could be applied to other topics.

9. Work with Black supplementary schools, public and community historians such as those listed on the National Association of Black Supplementary Schools website;  the Croydon Supplementary Education Project;  Black History Walks, Black History Studies; the Windrush Foundation; the Equiano Society, Robin Walker; the Thinking Black educational project and and BTWSC/AHR/BBM/BMC to share knowledge and approaches to teaching Black British History, allowing school teachers to learn from the wisdom of community practitioners who have been teaching and making the subject accessible for decades. 

10. Harness Parent Power. While some parents have been conscious of the problem for years, the homeschooling necessitated by lockdown this year will have meant many others have encountered the detail of their children's history lessons for the first time; while the Black Lives Matter movement has highlighted the gaps in the narrative. Parents keen to diversify what their kids are learning can be signposted to the many resources referenced in this blog; but can also put pressure on schools to make change. 

11. Engage pupils themselves in the process of change. It's clear many young people have their own views on this problem already, and have taken action, for example the Black Curriculum, Impact of Omission and Fill in the Blanks campaigns, as well as involvement in Black Lives Matter protests this year. The energy of current pupils can be channeled within schools into changing what lessons look like.  An excellent example of this comes from Dr. Challoner’s Grammar School in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, where the Assistant head teacher Catherine Priggs (who recently wrote about this process in the Historical Association’s Teaching History magazine) engaged her Year 8 pupils to lead the school’s review of the Key Stage 3 curriculum, and make their own recommendations for how to diversify what was being taught.

Change from above

12. Work with Exam boards to ensure they include and vigorously promote more Black British History modules. Up till now, none of the EdExcel (Britain’s most popular board)’s GCSE modules mention Black people in Britain. Edexcel’s parent company Pearson are now planning to introduce a module on Migration (a topic offered by OCR and AQA since 2016- listen to Martin Spafford talking about the course it here). However, only 4% of schools currently take this module, so the exam boards (and the rest of us) must do more to incentivise uptake. Besides specific modules on the topic, exam boards should ensure that all their modules take account of Black British History, whether asking questions about Cromwell’s imperial designs or using the contrasting example of the Bristol bus boycott to the better known events in Montgomery, Alabama. The OCR African Kingdoms A level option is an excellent example of how the offer can be diversified.

13. Work with Ofsted to ensure they are effectively inspecting the content as well as the quality of lessons, and including this in training of inspectors. The new 2019 inspection framework specifically guards against ‘curriculum narrowing’, so we must ensure inspectors have a good grounding in how a broad curriculum should incorporate Black British History. Senior Leadership Teams in schools will listen if Ofsted reports suggest that things need to change, and inspectors, unlike policy makers, actually see what happens in the classroom.

14. Petition individual schools, academy trusts and federations, as well as the local authorities (who still control a number of schools and can have quite a lot of wider influence over schools in their catchment area), asking them to consider making some of the changes listed here. The Runnymede Trust has suggested contacting school governors, or becoming a governor yourself. They provides further advice on this and a letter template here.
 
15. Petition to increase the amount of time given for teaching history in general, reviewing whether to make it a compulsory GCSE option. When calling for new topics to be taught, we need to bear in mind that some teachers only have an hour a week to teach history. This is not an excuse, and Black British History should not be seen as an extra to be bolted on, but rather a theme to integrate- for example by being sure to talk about Black soldiers and giving a global perspective when looking at the World Wars, but more time would clearly help.

16. Establish a Centre for Teaching Race, Migration and Empire, a suggestion made by the Runnymede Trust and the TIDE project last year in their Teaching Migration, Belonging and Empire in Secondary Schools report. This would be modelled on the high successful  UCL Centre for Holocaust Education, and provide a hub and most importantly funding, for many of the suggestions made in this blog. Some of this funding might have to come from non-governmental sources, as with the Centre for Holocaust Education which is run in partnership between the Department for Education and the Pears Foundation. For more about how to support the campaign for such a Centre click here.

Harnessing the influence of other stakeholders

17. Engage with Museums and Galleries to ensure they are including Black British History in their Schools outreach programmes. They could follow the example of the Black Cultural Archives’s Schools Programme, as well as learning from groups such as Museum Detox, and freelance experts such as Michael Ohajuru, who leads Image of the Black tours in London’s major galleries, as well as taking his John Blanke Project into schools. Positive steps are being made in this direction, with Historic Royal Palaces hiring a Curator for Inclusive Histories, and Royal Museums Greenwich looking to include more Black History in their Tudors programming.

18. Assemble some prominent historians to back reform, some of whom have tweeted in support of change in recent months. This would be facilitated by the document created by the working group, which would make it clear exactly what is being proposed. Most historians would probably back at least the proposal to make more time for history in school timetables. Some might also be interested in working more closely with teachers to ensure the latest research is injected straight into the classroom. While it is often not practical for historians to make regular school visits (and this can be a bit of an add-on), short video clips of them talking direct to camera, as used to great effect by Jason Todd and Yasmin Khan, looking at her book The Raj at War, is a more scalable way of bringing them into the classroom. This would also help us to reach less motivated teachers, who could be encouraged by the example of their history heroes, as well as making a lasting impression on students.

19. Engage with journalists by pitching stories, tweeting, responding to the news cycle (even blogging!), and giving a more in depth understanding of and commentary the topic, especially the point that Black British History is about so much more than enslavement. The media can make a big difference, and more initiatives like the Guardian's Black History Timeline, which was rewritten and reissued this summer, or ITV's Back to School with Alison Hammond should be encouraged. Another positive development is that the BBC has made some of their back catalogue, such as David Olusoga's Black and British: A Forgotten History, available on iPlayer under the heading: 'Exploring Black History'- there are many more programmes that could be made more accessible in this way by both the BBC and other channels. 

There is a heartening willingness amongst increasing numbers of teachers, schools and other stakeholders to make this change, and some great examples of schools that are already teaching Black British History. I hope some of them will have further ideas to add to this list. We are stronger together and if we want to change what happens in our classrooms sooner rather than later we need to pool our resources and experiences and look beyond changing the National Curriculum to ensure young people learn the true story of our nation.
 
This blog is the result of many conversations over several years, made urgent once more by the events of this year. These have at times been hard to keep up with, so if I’ve missed anything, please let me know in the comments and I’ll add/edit accordingly.
 
I would particularly like to thank the following people for their input and feedback on this blog, while emphasising that any errors remain my own: Shahmima Akhtar, Kerry Apps, Sean Creighton, Hannah Elias, Corinne Fowler, Tim Jenner, Abdul Mohamud, Michael Ohajuru, Helen Sanson, Martin Spafford and.Robin Whitburn.