Records can trace the Black presence in England, as far back as the arrival of the Roman army. African soldiers in the Roman Imperial army defended Hadrians Wall in the Third century A.D. They were a division of Moors from North Africa and based near Carlisle.
The first evidence of the Black presence in London is provided by the recording of the payment of 8d a day to a Black musician in 1507 employed by the court of Henry VII.
A presence that until recently has been largely written out of our understanding of the past, a past that includes people like: Noor Inayat Khan and Dr Harold Moody.
 |  | photo shows Noor Inayat Khan. Courtesy of the Princess Noor Appreciation Society. |
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Noor Inayat Khan's father was from India, her mother was from America and she herself was born in Moscow. Noor Khan was the eldest of four children, her two brothers and one sister were all born in London. Her father established the Sufi religious order in Europe. The family moved to England then France, but with the fall of France in 1940 they returned to Britain.
In November 1940 Noor joined the Womens Auxiliary Air Force and trained as a wireless operator, later she was accepted as a wireless operator for the Special Operations Executive.
Under the code name Madeleine she was flown into Paris on the 16/06/1943 to work with the French Resistance. Arrested in October 1943 she resisted interogation, and twice tried to escape from the Paris H.Q.of the Gestapo. In November 1943 she was sent to Germany and on the 12th September 1944 she was executed with three other prisoners in Dachau concentration camp. She was awared the Croix de Guerre with Gold Star in 1946 and George Cross in 1949.
photo shows Dr Harold Moody. Courtesy of Stephen Bourne. | |  |
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Dr Harold Moody's father was a well off retail chemist. He moved to London from Jamaica in 1904 to study medicine at Kings College. He qualified in 1910, but faced with discrimination in employment and housing he set his own practice in Peckham South London in 1913.
A devout Christain he was involved in various religious and charitable organisations. In 1931 with a number of others in the Central YMCA Tottenham Court Road London he founded the League of Coloured Peoples and remained its president from 1931 until his death in 1947.
The League organised yearly Christmas parties and summer trips to Epsom for London's Black children. It upset some Black political activitists for not being a radical campaigning organisation. However it did challenge the colour bar in the British armed forces during the Second World War forcing the Colonial Office to relax the colour bar including commissions during the war years. Five of Harold's six children recieved army or RAF commissions.
A few places in Peckham now commemorate Dr Moody. An English Heritage Blue Plaque was erected in 1995 on 164 Queens Road Peckham SE15, where he use to have his medical practice. A park in Gordon Road Peckham has been named in his honour, and in 2001 a Indian Bean tree was planted in Burgess Park Southwark in his memory.
The course I am running at London Metropolitan Archives from April aims to tell the stories of these and other figures from London's past, and reveal the depth and richness of the many stories that remain to be told.
