Olive Morris
Campaigner / Activist
Morris was a campaigner and civil rights activist. She was fearless. Morris was born in St Catherine Jamaica in 1952 and moved with her family to London when she was nine.
She studied at the London College of Printing in Elephant and Castle in London, and later went on to study at Manchester University.
Morris was an activist, she campaigned against race and gender discrimination. She was a founding member of The Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD), a member of The British Black Panther Movement and a founding member of The Manchester Black Women’s Cooperative and Manchester Black Women’s Mutual Aid Group.
Claudia Jones
Activist/JOURNALIST
Jones was born in Port of Spain Trinidad in 1915. She travelled to the USA with her family but was later deported due to her political activities as a feminist and member of the Communist party. Jones settled in the UK where she continued her activism and founded Britain’s first major black newspaper The West Indian Gazette in 1958.
Jones organised events with the intention to unify which culminated to the start of the Notting Hill Carnival. Jones is known as the ‘Mother of Caribbean Carnival in Britain’.
William Cuffay
Campaigner
Cuffay was born in Gillingham in 1788 to an English mother his father was a former African slave from St Kitts.
A tailor by trade Cuffay campaigned for the rights of his fellow workers, in 1839 he helped found The Metropolitan Tailors Charter Association serving on the National Executive in 1842 Cuffay was highly regarded by his peers.
Due to his activism Cuffay was targeted and betrayed by a government spy, he was arrested and convicted to twenty-one years imprisonment in Tasmania Australia. Although released after three years Cuffay decided to stay in Tasmania where he continued his activism.
Ottobah Cugoano
Abolitionist
Cugoana was born in Ghana in 1757. He was sold into slavery at the age of 13 and taken to Grenada where he worked on a plantation. In 1772 Cugoana was bought by English merchants and brought to the UK where he was baptized as John Stuart. He was taught to read and write and was freed the same year as a result of the Somerset Case of 1772 which ruled slavery had no basis in English common law.
Cugoano joined the group 'Sons of Africa' (Olaudah Equiano was also a member). The group campaigned for the abolition of slavery and in 1787 he wrote the book Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species.
Princess SophiA Duleep Singh
Suffragette
Singh was born in London in 1876, she was a suffragette. Her father was a Sikh prince - the last Maharaja Sir Duleep Singh. As a teenager he was forced to abdicate by the East India Company and subsequently exiled to Britain. Her mother was German and her god mother was Queen Victoria. Singh was a socialite, she loved photography, fashion, music and animals.
In 1909 Singh became a suffragette fighting for women’s voting rights she was an asset to the movement. As Queen Victoria’s god daughter her activism received attention from the press. In fact the photo shows Singh selling the Suffragette magazine outside Hampton Court Palace. As a member of the Women’s Tax Reform League she refused to pay her dog licenses and subsequent fines - their slogan was ‘No Vote No tax’.
During World War One Singh joined the British Red Cross, tending to injured Indian soldiers in Brighton.
Dr Harold Moody
Civil Rights Activist/DOCTOR
Dr Moody was a Doctor and Civil Rights Activist, he was born in Kingston Jamaica in 1882. He travelled to the UK in 1904 to study medicine at Kings College London finishing top of his class. Dr Moody went on to work at The Royal Eye Hospital in London. However, when he was subsequently refused work due to racism Dr Moody started his own medical practice in Peckham South London in 1913.
He also advocated on behalf of people who needed help and was a well respected community leader. In 1931 Dr Moody founded Britain’s first civil rights organisation The League of Coloured People. The group campaigned against racism and for racial equality and civil rights.
In March 2019 a plaque commissioned by Nubian Jak Community Trust in Dr Moody's honour was unveiled at the Central YMCA London to commemorate the 88th year of the organisations he founded.
Marcus Garvey
Campaigner / Activist / ENTREPRENEUR
Garvey studied and lived in the UK during his lifetime. His impact was huge, he’s best known for promoting self empowerment and economic freedom for peoples of African descent. Garvey was born in 1887 in St Ann’s Bay Jamaica, he travelled to the UK to study law and philosophy at Birbeck college, he then went back to Jamaica.
Garvey was politically active, he was President General of The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). He was also President and a Director of Black Star Line, a shipping and passenger line with its own fleet of ships The fleet operated between the USA and the West Indies between 1919 and 1922.
Garvey published newspapers and founded The Peoples Political Party, Jamaica’s first modern political party. Garvey travelled back to the UK living the last five years of his life in London.
Africanus Horton
Nationalist / Surgeon / Author
Horton was a surgeon, scientist, soldier, author and political thinker.
He was born James Horton in 1835 in Freetown Sierra Leone, his father was from Nigerian (Igbo). In 1855 Horton received a scholarship to study medicine at Kings College London, he then went onto study in Edinburgh. Horton was appointed as a Staff Assistant Surgeon with the British Army.
Horton’s publications The Political Economy of British West Africa with the Requirements of Several Colonies and Settlements and West African Countries and Peoples challenged racist opinion held by some Europeans that Africans were physically and intellectually inferior. Horton was the first African thinker to campaign for self-governance from colonisation in West African countries.
Mary Prince
Abolitionist / Author
Prince was an outspoken campaigner against slavery and an author. She was born in 1788 into slavery in Bermuda. At 12 Prince was sold for £38 (which is the equivalent of £4484.00 in 2017). She was then sold on to a succession of different owners. In 1828 Prince travelled to England with her owners, she ran away and lived with a family in Bloomsbury London. She campaigned against slavery with the Anti Slavery Society.
Prince presented an anti-slavery petition to Parliament - the first woman to do so. She wrote and published her autobiography The History of Mary Prince. A West Indian Slave, the first black woman to do so. The book detailed the cruelty of slavery.
Olaudah Equiano
Abolitionist / Author
Equiano also went by the names of Gustavus Vassa and Peter Duly. He was a trader and prominent figure in the slave trade abolition movement. He was born in 1745 in Nigeria (in a region now known as Anambra State). Equiano was enslaved as a child and taken to the Caribbean where he worked extremely hard as a trader, saving enough money to subsequently buy his freedom. In 1766, he travelled to the UK.
Equiano was a member of the Anti-Slavery organisation Sons of Africa, a group formed by Africans living in Britain. He published his autobiography The interesting narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano in 1789. His book documented the brutality of slavery.
Equiano also spoke publicly about slavery and wrote newspaper articles.