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The 100 Great Black Britons Campaign

A campaign in 2019 to celebrate Black British History involved the public voting and a panel of experts finalising a list of 100 Great Black Britons. This blog post will give a brief overview of four of them.


Mary Seacole was born in Jamaica in 1805, when it was a British colony, to a Scottish officer in the British Army and a Jamaican boarding house keeper and healer. Seacole learned these skills from her mother, and developed them on her travels in tropical climates as a young woman. This meant she was very prepared to respond when Britain and its allies entered the Crimean War against Russia in 1853. When she was rejected from joining Florence Nightingale’s team of nurses during the conflict, which she suspected was due to racism, Seacole used her own money to travel near to the fighting and establish the ‘British Hotel’. From this establishment, and also on battlefields, Seacole offered food, rest and medical care to soldiers in need. She was thanked for her work after the end of the Crimean War in 1856, with a grand festival in her honour which was attended by thousands. The following year, Seacole published a travel memoir, and spent the rest of her life between Britain and Jamaica. She died aged 76 in England in 1881.


It is thought that Olaudah Equiano was born in what is now southern Nigeria in around 1745. As a child, he was kidnapped, taken to a British colony in North America, and sold into slavery. He had various owners, some of whom taught him to read and write and had jobs that allowed him to travel. The last of his owners permitted him to trade to earn an income, and this meant he was able to purchase his freedom in 1766. As a free man, Equiano moved to England and continued to trade. He also published writings and delivered speeches which advocated for the abolition of the slave trade, such as his autobiography of 1789, and ultimately contributed to the passing of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807. Equiano died aged 52 in England in 1797.


Mary Prince was born in the British oversees territory of Bermuda in 1788, to enslaved parents with different owners. Prince was born into slavery, and separated from her family aged 12. She remained in slavery for the next few decades, but hoped she had found a way out when she married a free black man in 1826. However, even with her husband offering payment to her owner, Prince was not released from slavery. Her hopes were then raised again two years later, as her owner brought her to England where slavery was illegal, but this also did not result in her freedom. Despite this, the Anti-Slavery Society helped her to publish a memoir in 1831 which was used by Prince and other abolitionists to further their cause. Prince worked in various households in England for at least the next two years after this publication, but the location and date of her death is unknown.


Bernie Grant was born in the colony of British Guiana in 1944, to two schoolteachers. They moved to England in 1963, and Grant continued his studies up to degree level until 1969 when he left university in protest against the discrimination faced by black students. This led him to work as an International Telephonist for the General Post Office, through which he became involved in the Union of Post Office Workers. In 1978 he became a full time Area Officer for the Union, and in 1981 he started working full time for the Black Trades Unionists Solidarity Movement he founded. At the same time as his involvement with workers’ rights, Grant was also participating in local politics. By 1985, he was the first ever black person in Europe to be the Leader of a Council. In this role, he fought against discrimination based on disability, gender, race and sexual orientation. Grant then moved into national politics in 1987, as one of the first three black Members of Parliament. He continued to fight for the same causes as an MP, until he died aged 56 in England in 2000.


To find out more about the 100 Great Black Britons Campaign, please see this website: https://www.100greatblackbritons.co.uk/index.php. To find out more about the four individuals covered in this article, please see the following webpages:

 
 
 

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