Starting in late April, Birkbeck College is running courses at London Metropolitan Archive and the Museum in Docklands. Both are part of Birkbeck College's Diverse City season, and look at the waves of immigration into London throughout history, with a special focus on Black and Asian experience.
We asked Peter Ashan tells us a bit more about a couple of pre-50s personalities connected with London who will feature in his course.
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Meanwhile at Sutton House in Hackney, historian S I Martin is running a series of in-depth talks about aspects of Black history, one each month until the end of the year. The talks leap through all the centuries of Black presence in Britain - from Tudor England, to Black and Asian entrepreneurs of the 18th and 19th century, to black women across previous centuries.
Unlike the Birkbeck courses, these are not academic, and everyone is welcome to come to just one or all of the talks. Sutton House is the oldest building in Hackney, and so an appropriate place to take the long view of Black history.
The blue plaque on Dr Harold Moody's former home in Peckham. Photo: K Smith | |  |
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The thread uniting all these historians is the desire to highlight that earlier Black histories in Britain can't be condensed down into half-a-dozen repeatedly wheeled out figures.
As Stephen Bourne writes, there is more to Black History than Mary Seacole. The historian has just published a new book about finding ignored Black Histories in Southwark. We asked him to tell us a bit more about some of the figures he has uncovered, and talk about some of the best places for searching for Black history in that borough.
Also worth looking out for is a new Hackney arts venue X5. Its upcoming events include a photo exhibition about the Black victims of the Nazis, as well as oral history and film showings.
