Black History in London

Black history in London began in the 1500s. For 1000 years Westminster has been Britain’s royal and political power base. Trade, war, religion, reform: all originate in Westminster and Black people have been impacted by all four. Whilst Black British history doesn’t start or end with the Atlantic Slave Trade it does play a significant part. If you’d wondered how it began and ended, this tour covers both ends. We explore the lives of many involved through memorials, statues and buildings; Britons, Africans and Americans. The status of Black Britons, or to be more precise Africans owned by Britons, was similarly directed and legislated from this small area. We’ll discover even this is not as tidy as you would suppose. We’ll also meet some Black Londoners who had the ‘lived experience’ as both enslaved and free men and who wasted no energy in embracing freedom. In Westminster Black history is visible everywhere, even in fragments or within structures more universally ‘British’. The history surrounds us.