On Monday 15th November a group of seven Upper Fourth, and Lower Fifth girls travelled by tube to the Brixton Black Cultural Archives. The archives were founded in 1981 by historian Len Garrison. Garrison’s mission was to record and preserve documents celebrating the history of those of African descent living in Britain, a history which many had begun to forget.

Once we arrived, we were taken upstairs to a small “discussion” room, where we received a talk surrounding the Windrush generation. We discussed how the Windrush were treated on first arrival in Britain and the job sectors they were employed into. Then, the talk focused on two female activists, who had both campaigned for equal rights for the black British population. The first, Claudia Jones, who founded the Notting Hill Carnival. The carnival was created in 1965, to begin removing racial tensions that had been building up across London – but specifically in Notting Hill, where there were countless reports of racially aggravated assault on young black men. The second activist was Connie Mark MBE, a WW2 medical secretary for the British Army. The British Army refused to let her receive equal pay to her white, male counterparts. And at the end of WW2, Mark wasn’t awarded her deserved medal for her service within the war. In fact, she didn’t receive the medal until 1992!

The short talk came to an end and we were given time to visit the rest of the archives. We saw modern artistic representations of the Windrush generation, painted in a competition set up by the archives. There were also newspaper articles and diary entries of those, on the Windrush boat, coming into Britain for the first time.

After enjoying a range of activities, we had the very memorable experiencing of learning Jamaican dancing. The dancing was really easy to pick up as there are only three moves, so we were dancing along to Jamaican ‘ska’ in no time! This brought an enjoyable and original end to our trip and we were all disappointed when we eventually had to stop…

The trip was both informative and inspiring, and everyone left with a new knowledge of black history in Britain.

Kiera N and Eliza A – Lower Fifth pupils