Latest Posts
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It’s Halloween, Full Moon and a Blue Moon – but what does that mean? by Professor Anne Lawrence-Mathers
It is very hard to miss the fact that Saturday 31st October is Halloween, and that this year the date coincides with a full Moon. Still more unusually this full Moon will be acclaimed as a ‘Blue Moon’ since it… Continue reading
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#BLM Voices of the Dream Ancestors: from National Hero to the Aboriginal Rights Movement by Tamisan Latherow
CONTENT WARNING: This post may contain voices, images or names of people who have died. *Note, throughout this article we use the terms Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. This term was chosen specifically due to the naming conventions of the… Continue reading
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#BLM ‘a good breedin’ ‘oman sho did fetch de money,’ by Aisha Djelid
On the 10th January 1859 a court in Charleston, South Carolina, advertised the sale of Betty, a twenty-five-year-old enslaved woman. Betty was a ‘breeding woman,’ meaning that slaveholders valued Betty for being young, strong, healthy and, crucially, fertile. Advertised as a… Continue reading
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#BHM ‘Beyond the Reggae Bassline’ by Professor Matt Worley
For Bunny ‘Striker’ Lee, whose death was announced as I wrote this blog (1941–2020) I first heard Reggae as a child, the rhythms sending me to sleep as a I lay on a camp-bed in Nottingham. My Grandma lived on… Continue reading
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#BLM Finding ‘sanctuary’ with the US Army, by Liz Barnes
During the American Civil War (1861-1865), hundreds of thousands of enslaved men, women, and children fled farms and plantations across the South to secure their freedom. Frequently, this flight was towards the camps of soldiers fighting for the US Army,… Continue reading
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#BHM ‘The different meaning of HMT Empire Windrush’ by Dr Daniel Renshaw
On a rainy June morning in the summer of 1948 a British troopship, itself requisitioned from the German navy during the Second World War, arrived at Tilbury docks in Essex, carrying a number of Polish ex-soldiers, some Jamaican pilots who… Continue reading
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#BHM ‘the backbone of Mau Mau’: Women’s Contributions in Conflict, Kenya by Beth Rebisz
(Photograph taken by author) On 12th September 2015, a memorial in honour of Kenya’s freedom fighters was unveiled in Uhuru Park, Nairobi. The memorial was part of an out-of-court settlement reached between the British government and a group of Kenyans who… Continue reading
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#BHM ‘A visit to the countryside is always accompanied by a feeling of unease; dread.’ by Lottie Jacob and Jeremy Burchardt
The countryside has long been a place intrinsic to the British national identity, from the Romantic movement through to the present day. And yet, it has remained largely inaccessible to people of colour, both literally in rural landscapes – for… Continue reading
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#BHM ‘She hits massa with de hoe:’ The Weaponization of Plantation Labour Equipment by Enslaved Women in the Antebellum American South, by Erin Shearer
Three women and one man hoeing in field, (1899), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/91785649/] This photograph, titled Three women and one man hoeing in a field, depicts the agricultural labour of unidentified African Americans in the late nineteenth century.… Continue reading
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Welcome to Black History Month in the Department of History by Professor David Stack #BHM
2020 marks the 33rd anniversary of Black History Month (BHM) in the UK, and it has never seemed more relevant. One outstanding feature of the wave of protests, conversations, and questioning that has followed the murder of George Floyd has… Continue reading
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