London Black History Personalities

Ignatius Sancho was the first African prose writer whose work was published in England. He was born in 1729 on a slave ship in the mid-Atlantic. Following the death of his parents, his owner brought him to England at the age of two and sold him to three sisters in London.  Ignatius taught himself to read and write but his owners refused to allow him to be educated further, so he ran away and stayed with the Duke of Montagu. He worked for the duchess as a butler, and she and her husband encouraged him to pursue his education.  

Sancho went on to write poetry, two stage plays and a Theory of Music dedicated to the Princess Royal. He was also a composer, with three collections of songs, minuets, and other pieces for violin, mandolin, flute and harpsichord all published anonymously. Sancho became friends with a group of London writers and artists.  He was friends with the great actor Garrick, the writer Samuel Johnson and one of the most famous painters of the day, Gainsborough, painted his portrait.

Sancho left the service of the Montagus in 1773, and with a legacy left to him by the Duchess of Montagu, he opened a grocery shop which he ran with his wife until he died in 1780. His writing impressed its readers and proved wrong the common racist view that Africans were not as clever as British people.

Olaudah Equiano was an African writer whose experiences as a slave prompted him to become involved in the British abolition movement.
In his autobiography, Olaudah Equiano writes that he was born in the Eboe province, in the area that is now southern Nigeria. He describes how he was kidnapped with his sister at around the age of 11, sold by local slave traders and shipped across the Atlantic to Barbados and then Virginia.

In Virginia he was sold to a Royal Navy officer, who renamed him 'Gustavus Vassa' after the 16th-century Swedish king. Equiano travelled the oceans for eight years, during which time he was baptised and learned to read and write.

Equiano was then sold to a ship captain in London, who took him to Montserrat, where he was sold to a prominent merchant. While working as a deckhand, valet and barber, Equiano earned money by trading on the side. In only three years, he made enough money to buy his own freedom. Equiano then spent much of the next 20 years travelling the world, including trips to Turkey and the Arctic.

In 1786 in London, he became involved in the movement to abolish slavery. He was a prominent member of the 'Sons of Africa', a group of 12 black men who campaigned for abolition. In 1789 he published his autobiography, 'The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African'. He travelled widely promoting the book, which became immensely popular, helped the abolitionist cause, and made Equiano a wealthy man. It is one of the earliest books published by a black African writer.

William Wilberforce was born into a wealthy family in Hull, in 1759.  By the time he graduated from Cambridge University at the age of 20, he had decided to enter politics and in 1780 he was elected MP for Hull.  Wilberforce started to become more interested in social problems when he converted to Evangelical Christianity and joined the Clapham Set, a group of Christians in London committed to social reform.  It was at this point that other campaigners persuaded him to use his power as an MP to help bring an end to the slave trade.  He soon became one of the leaders of the campaign.

In 1789 he made his first speech against the slave trade in the House of Commons, and two years later he introduced a bill to abolish the slave trade.  This bill was defeated by a large majority (163 to 88 votes) but Wilberforce continued to campaign in Parliament and eventually, in 1807, the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed.  When other campaigners objected that this act did not go far enough, as it did not free existing slaves, Wilberforce initially disagreed, arguing that slaves were not ready for freedom until they had been educated for paid jobs.  However he was eventually persuaded to join the new campaign although he did not play an important role in it since in 1825 he had retired from the House of Commons.  Wilberforce died in July 1833, one month before the Abolition of Slavery Act was passed.

Robert Wedderburn was the son of a plantation owner and a Jamaican slave. He lived in London, where he campaigned for the rights of working class people and for the abolition of slavery. He was instrumental in achieving the freedom of the press in Britain in the 19th century.

Robert Wedderburn was born in Jamaica in 1762. His father, James Wedderburn, had been born in Scotland and owned a large sugar plantation on the island. His mother, Rosanna, was a slave owned by Wedderburn. When she was pregnant, Wedderburn sold her to Lady Douglas, stipulating that the child that she bore should be free from birth. That child was Robert Wedderburn. He was brought up on the estate of Lady Douglas. Wedderburn recalled that as a child he witnessed both his mother and grandmother being whipped. As soon as he was old enough, Wedderburn left the plantation and became a sailor. He arrived in England in 1778 and soon afterwards found work as a tailor.

In 1812 Wedderburn joined a small group of radical reformers who advocated revolution. The government became very concerned about this group and employed a spy to report on their activities. On 2nd December 1816, the group organised a mass meeting at Spa Fields Islington. The speakers at the meeting included Henry 'Orator' Hunt and James Watson. The magistrates decided to disperse the meeting and while eighty police officers were doing this, one of Wedderburn’s group was stabbed.
Robert Wedderburn also opened his own Unitarian chapel in Hopkins Street, Soho. Government spies were soon reporting that Wedderburn was making "violent, seditious, and bitterly anti-Christian speeches."

Wedderburn, with many other working class radicals spent time in prison for publishing opinions, on religious and other matters, which challenged the ideas of the ruling class. A government spy claimed that at one meeting Wedderburn argued that a slave had the right to kill his master. This resulted in Wedderburn being arrested and charged with sedition and blasphemy. He was sent to Newgate Prison but was later released when his followers raised £200 bail money. In another incident Wedderburn was later charged with "blasphemous libel". Found guilty he was sentenced to two years in Dorchester Prison.

On his release Wedderburn published The Horrors of Slavery (1824). He continued to campaign for freedom of speech and in 1831, at the age of 68, he was arrested and sent to Giltspur Street Prison. While in prison he wrote a letter to a close friend but this was the last time Wedderburn appeared in the archives and it is not known when he died.

Mary Seacole was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805, the daughter of a free Black woman and a Scottish army officer. Her mother was a nurse and treated people with local medicines and herbs. We don't know if Mary went to school but she could read and write. When she was young Mary travelled frequently, which was unusual for a woman then.

When war broke out in the Crimea between Britain and Russia, Seacole travelled to London, eager to join Florence Nightingale's team of nurses. They refused to employ her, which Seacole suspected was due to racism. Undeterred, she travelled to the Crimea herself and set up a 'hotel' near the front line. Here, she cooked and cared for sick and injured soldiers. She sold soldiers things they needed such as tins of soup, saddles and boots.

Seacole used herbal remedies learnt from her mother to combat dysentery and cholera. Mary ran a daily clinic to help ill soldiers. Mary also helped on the battlefield, at times even under cannon fire. The men loved her and called her 'Mother Seacole'. Mary was given medals by Britain, Turkey and France for her bravery in the war.

When war ended, she returned to London penniless. Grateful soldiers held an event to raise money for her and she was later employed by the royal family. She wrote a book about her life, and it became a best-seller. Mary died in 1881 aged 76. She is buried in London.

Joseph Johnson was a black merchant sailor in the early 19th century.  When he left the navy he was not given a pension, nor was he given support by his local parish, as he was not born in the country.  Thus as an old man he was forced to work to support himself.  He built a model of the ship Nelson, which he wore on his cap on top of his head.  He would then gracefully dance along, moving his head up and down to mimic the movement of waves, and singing songs he had learnt at sea to entertain the people of London.  While white observers admired the novelty of his act, some black Londoners would have recognised his movement from African traditions and dances developed by black slaves in America.

Claudia Jones, born in Trinidad in 1915, is famous for her role in campaigning for black people’s rights in Britain.  However she first rose to prominence as a member of the Communist Party in America, where she won international fame as a civil rights campaigner.  She came to Britain in 1955 when she was deported from the USA during anti-communist fervour.  She soon founded the West Indian Gazette, Britain’s first black newspaper, which campaigned for equal opportunities for the black community.  When race riots broke out in London’s Notting Hill in 1958, Jones defended the black communities by joining a committee that represented their interests to the government.  The following year she helped to launch the Notting Hill Carnival, which brought black people and white people together in a celebration of Caribbean culture.  She is remembered as a committed feminist as well as an anti-racist activist, and has been seen as a role model by many politically active women.

Blair Peach was a teacher who was killed by police during an anti-racist demonstration in 1979.  He was one of 3,000 protesters who went to Southall in West London, to protest at a public meeting held by the racist National Front party in the town hall of this largely Asian area.  There were 2,756 officers sent to police the event, and many eyewitness reports, from both protesters and journalists, detail extreme police brutality against the demonstrators; at least two other protesters had their skulls fractured.  Despite the testimony of eleven witnesses claiming to have seen police hitting Mr Peach, no officer was ever charged with the alleged attack, and there has been no public inquiry into the case.

Peach was remembered by his students as an exceptional teacher. One said, “He was a different kind of teacher… He cared about these children and wanted them to be free thinking adults...” 

Buchi Emecheta was born in Nigeria on 21 July 1944. At a young age, Emecheta was orphaned and she spent her early childhood years being educated at a missionary school. At seventeen she was married to Sylvester Onwordi, a student to whom she had been engaged since she was eleven. Her husband went to London to study and she went with him in 1962. At the age of twenty-two she left her husband and took a BSc degree in sociology at London University, while supporting her five children and writing.

Much of her fiction has focused on sexual politics and racial prejudice, and is based on her own experiences as both a single parent and a black woman living in Britain. Her first novel, the semi-autobiographical In the Ditch, was published in 1972, and provides a fictionalised portrait of a poor young Nigerian woman struggling to bring up her children in London. Other writing that has been in set in London includes Gwendolen (1989), the story of a young West Indian girl living in London; and Kehinde (1994), about a middle-aged Nigerian wife and mother who returns to Nigeria after living in London for many years.

In 1983 she was selected as one of twenty 'Best of Young British Writers' by the Book Marketing Council. She lectured in the United States throughout 1979 as Visiting Professor at a number of universities and returned to Nigeria in 1980 as Senior Research Fellow and Visiting Professor of English at the University of Calabar. She runs the Ogwugwu Afor Publishing Company with her son. It has branches in London, where she lives, and in Ibuza. Since 1979 she has been a member of the Home Secretary's Advisory Council on Race. She was a member of the Arts Council from 1982 to 1983, and is a regular contributor to the New Statesman, the Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian.

In 1987 Diane Abbot became the first black woman to be elected to the British House of Commons, and has represented Hackney North and Stoke Newington as its Labour MP since that date.  She has played an important role in Parliament as a member of committees which look closely at government policies, and she recently set up a new committee to investigate gun crime in Britain.  She has also played an important role in the Labour party, being elected as a member of the executive committee that runs the party 1994-1997.  Abbot keeps a high profile in the media, regularly contributing to both television and radio programmes.  She is well known for her support of feminist, working class and anti-racist causes.

Doreen Lawrence was born in Jamaica in 1952. She came to England aged nine and went to school in south-east London. In 1972, while working in a bank, she married Neville Lawrence. Her son, Stephen, was born in 1974.  In spring 1993, Stephen, then 18, was waiting for a bus when a gang of five White men stabbed him to death. None of Stephen's killers was ever successfully prosecuted.

Since the murder of her son she has campaigned for justice for Stephen and for other victims of racially motivated crime, as well as for police reform. Four years after Stephen's death, at the urging of the Lawrence family, the Home Secretary launched an inquiry into the investigation of the murder. This concluded that London's police force was 'institutionally racist' and recommended proposals to end racism in the police.

In 2003 Doreen was awarded an OBE for services to community relations. Doreen has also worked tirelessly to establish a lasting legacy for her son.  Currently, she serves at the director of the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust.  The Trust’s mission is based on Stephen’s aspiration to become an architect, and it seeks to improve the educational achievements of black and ethnic-minority students, and help young people find pathways out of poverty into sustainable, rewarding careers in architecture, building construction and other fields associated with urban design and regeneration. 

In addition to her work at the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust, she sits on panels within the Home Office and the Police Service, and she is a member of both the board and the council of Liberty, the human rights organization.  Doreen is also the author of ‘And Still I Rise,’ which details her personal story and the struggle to bring justice against a police force that had marginalised her and her family.

Oona King was elected as MP for Bethnal Green & Bow in East London in 1997, becoming the second black woman to sit in the House of Commons.  She served as a Labour MP until 2005, campaigning on a wide range of issues such as immigration, domestic violence and housing. Oona was born on the 22 October 1967 in Sheffield, and brought up in Camden. She gained a 1st class BA Politics degree at York University in 1990 and was awarded a scholarship to spend a year studying at Berkeley-University of California.  Before becoming an MP she worked as a political researcher and trade union officer.