Winifred Atwell
Musician
Atwell was the first black person to achieve a number one record in the UK music charts and to sell more than one million records in the UK alone. She was a pianist who played boogie-woogie and ragtime hits, though was also an accomplished classical piano player.
Atwell was born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1914, she went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music UK, becoming the first female pianist to gain the highest grade for musicianship. In the 1950s Atwell insured her hands for £40,00.00 which is the equivalent of about £1.5 million today.
Atwell played sell out tours in Europe and Australia, she played for Queen Elizabeth and had her own TV series in the UK and Australia. She didn’t get a chance to impact America as there was opposition to a British sounding black woman in the south of the country.
Anna May Wong
Hollywood Actress
Anna May Wong was born Wong Liu-Tsong in 1905 in Los Angeles USA. She was an actress and the first person of Chinese descent to become a Hollywood and International star. Wong was a fashion icon.
Wong was fascinated with film and was determined to become an actress. Her first film appearance was as an extra in The Red Lantern in1919. Her first actual film role was in the The Toll of the Sea, 1922. Wong appeared in a number of Hollywood productions yet despite receiving great reviews she was continuously typecast and was never offered leading lady roles, (largely because Hollywood did not accept mixed race couples in films). Wong became increasingly frustrated so in the late 1920s she decided to move to Europe.
Her UK debut was in the 1929 film Piccadilly, which was set in London. Wong also starred in stage productions. Her performances earned her fame and rave reviews throughout Europe.
Ignatius Sancho
Author / Composer
Sancho was an author, composer and business man, he was born in 1729 on a slave ship where he was orphaned. Sancho was taken to England.and was taught to read by the family who bought him.
Sanchos worked as a butler in Greenwich London for prominent families. In 1774 Sancho opened a greengrocer in Mayfair. He became known for his letter writings calling for the abolition of slavery, many were published after his death.
As he was financially independent Sancho qualified to vote he is said to be the first person of African origin to vote in Britain.
Evelyn Dove
Entertainer
Dove was a singer and actress, she was born in Surrey, England in 1902 to a Sierra Leonean father and an English mother. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music and worked at the BBC as a singer and actress and worked overseas. She was also known as Norma Winchester. Dove was extremely popular especially in the 1940’s, appearing in variety radio programmes. She performed Variety in Sepia a TV special showcasing black talent broadcast on the BBC.
Samuel Coleridge Taylor
Composer
Coleridge Taylor was a composer and conductor. He was born in 1875 in Holborn London though grew up in Croydon. His father was from Sierra Leone, his mother was English. Coleridge Taylor studied at the Royal College of Music, later becoming a professor at the Crystal Palace School of Music. In 1904, he toured America where he met President Theodore Roosevelt in the White House. He sold his most famous composition Hawatha's Wedding Feast for a small sum. The works went on to become extremely popular and profitable selling hundreds of thousands of copies. The concern that Coleridge Taylor (the author) didn't reap the rewards for his work influenced the creation of the Performing Rights Society. To this day the Society represents its members by protecting their musical works.
Ira Aldridge
Actor
Aldridge was an American who became a British stage actor specialising in Shakespearean roles. He performed all over Europe. Aldridge was born in 1807 New York City, he travelled to England in 1824. In 1825 he made his European debut as Oroonoko in The Revolt of Surinam at the Royal Coburg Theatre London. Aldridge starred in five theatre productions and toured Bath, Devon, Edinburgh, Dublin, Serbia, Germany and Russia. After each performance he was said to have addressed the audience directly, telling them about the horrors of slavery and calling for the freedom of the enslaved. Of the 33 actors honoured at The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Stratford-upon-Avon, Aldridge is the only black person to have a bronze plaque. The house he bought in Upper Norwood also has a plaque in his honour.