October is Black History Month, where we celebrate the history of the black community across the globe. Throughout the month, the Women’s History Network Blog will have posts on black women and the black community. For more information on black history, see the website of the Black Cultural Archive which collects archival material on the black community in Britain. The National Archives also have an online exhibition based on their records, the Women’s Library has a webpage on what they hold relating to black history, while the National Library of Scotland have a small number of images online from the papers of the African missionary, Sir John Kirk. The Institute of Historical Research has an essay on the progress of British black history. There is also a number of online bibliographies on African American History; one on black nurses, two on Caribbean history, while it is always worth checking out the websites of the experts in the field. Experts on black women’s history in the United Kingdom include Henrice Altink, Barbara Bush, Emily West, Kate Dossett, and Rebecca Fraser.
Further Reading
Paula Giddings, When and Where I enter: the impact of black women on race and sex in America (1984).
David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine, eds., More than chattel: black women and slavery in the Americas (1996)
Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring women: reproduction in new world slavery (2004)
bell hooks, Ain’t I a woman: black women and feminism (1981).
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought (1990)
Katie Barclay is not a historian of black history, but the people she studies often owned slaves, helped colonise Africa and the rest of the world, and made Britain wealthy through exploitation, violence and theft. She is currently a researcher at Queen’s University, Belfast.
