Mixed Race Studies

Mixed-race couple: ‘The priest refused to marry us’

BBC News Magazine
2017-03-01

Claire Bates

Phil Coomes Trudy and Barclay Patoir met during World War Two at a time when mixed-race relationships were still taboo. More than 70 years later they reveal the obstacles they had to overcome to stay together.

When Trudy Menard and Barclay Patoir told friends and family they were going to get married, no-one thought it was a good idea – because Trudy was white and Barclay was black.

“When I told them at work they thought I was daft marrying a black man. They all said, ‘It won’t last you know,’ because it was a mixed-race marriage,” says Trudy.

“I think some people thought I was marrying beneath myself.”…

Read the entire article here.

‘We were the unspoken story of Ireland’

BBC News
2016-10-13

The #IamIrish exhibition in north London explores what it means to be mixed race and Irish.

Watch the video (00:02:21) here.

The love story that shocked the world

BBC News
2016-09-14

When an African prince and a white middle-class clerk from Lloyd’s underwriters got married in 1948, it provoked shock in Britain and Africa.

Seretse Khama met Ruth Williams while he was a student at Oxford University. After his studies, he was supposed to go home to the British Protectorate of Bechuanaland (now Botswana) and marry someone from his own tribe, but his romance with Williams changed everything.

His family disapproved and Khama was forced to renounce his claim to the throne. The British government came under pressure to show its disapproval and Khama was exiled from his homeland.

He later became the first president of Botswana when it became an independent country.

Witness spoke to Ruth Williams’s sister about the love that conquered prejudice.

Watch the interview here.

The black people ‘erased from history’

BBC News Magazine
2016-04-10

Arlene Gregorius, BBC Mexico

More than a million people in Mexico are descended from African slaves and identify as “black”, “dark” or “Afro-Mexican” even if they don’t look black. But beyond the southern state of Oaxaca they are little-known and the community’s leaders are now warning of possible radical steps to achieve official recognition.

“The police made me sing the national anthem three times, because they wouldn’t believe I was Mexican,” says Chogo el Bandeno, a black Mexican singer-songwriter.

“I had to list the governors of five states too.”

He was visiting the capital, Mexico City, hundreds of miles from his home in southern Mexico, when the police stopped him on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant.

Fortunately his rendition of the anthem and his knowledge of political leaders convinced the police to leave him alone, but other Afro-Mexicans have not been so fortunate…

Read the entire article here.

DNA study finds London was ethnically diverse from start

BBC News
2015-11-23

Pallab Ghosh, Science Correspondent

A DNA study has confirmed that London was an ethnically diverse city from its very beginnings, BBC News has learned.

The analysis reveals what some of the very first Londoners looked like and where they came from.

The first results are from four people: two had origins from outside Europe, another was from continental Europe and one was a native Briton.

The researchers plan to analyse more of the 20,000 human remains stored at the Museum of London.

According to Caroline McDonald, who is a senior curator at the museum, London was a cosmopolitan city from the moment it was created following the Roman invasion 2,000 years ago…

Early London: An artist’s impression of building work at the Roman Fort Wall in 200 AD (Museum of London, Peter Jackson)

“The thing to remember with the original Londoners is that they were not born here. Every first generation Londoner was from somewhere else – whether it was somewhere else in Britain, somewhere else on the continent somewhere else in the Mediterranean, somewhere else from Africa,” she said…

Read the entire article and watch the video here.

First black and minority ethnic orchestra to make debut

BBC News
2015-09-11

Lizo Mzimba

Europe’s first professional orchestra consisting entirely of black and minority ethnic musicians will make its debut this weekend at the Southbank Centre in London.

The Chineke orchestra has been created to promote diversity in a musical world that is predominantly white.

Lizo Mzimba reports from one of its final rehearsals.

Watch the story here.

The family who never knew their father

BBC News Magazine
2015-08-28

Harry Low

Our story about the forced repatriation of Chinese sailors who had been recruited for the Merchant Navy during World War Two told of the devastation for those families left behind. Barbara Janecek shared her own tale in response.

She had read about Yvonne Foley, whose father Nan Young, a Chinese ship engineer, was sent back to the Far East following the end of the war. He was one of thousands of recruits from Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong who lived in Liverpool.

“I was always waiting for my father to come back, I was always daydreaming he would,” says Barbara, whose father John had suffered the same fate. John Ong had married Eileen Hing in 1943 when they were both aged 23. Eileen was devastated when her husband left, leaving his wife to raise three children under the age of four…

Read the entire article here.

Looking for my Shanghai father

BBC News Magazine
2015-08-25

Jody-Lan Castle

Yvonne Foley with her mother Grace

After World War Two ended, the British government forcibly repatriated hundreds of Chinese sailors who had been recruited for the Merchant Navy. Their sudden departure had a devastating effect on families left behind, like that of Yvonne Foley.

“You’re just like your father,” Yvonne’s mother exclaimed, “always arguing, trying to change the world.”

The nine-year-old was confused. That sounded nothing like her father.

“I mean your Shanghai father,” her mother insisted.

Who? Yvonne was momentarily baffled, but then put it to the back of her mind.

Two years later, in 1957, the subject came up again. This time her mother, Grace, wanted to tell her more.

The man Yvonne had been calling “Dad” was not her biological father. Instead her birth father was Nan Young, a Chinese ship engineer her mother had met in Liverpool in 1943…

Read the entire article here.

Misty Copeland is first black dancer to lead US ballet group

BBC News
2015-07-01

Misty Copeland has become a breakout star for ballet

The American Ballet Theatre has named Misty Copeland its principal dancer – the first time a black ballerina has held the prestigious role.

Ms Copeland, 32, made her debut this month, starring in Swan Lake in New York, one of the most coveted roles in ballet.

In recent years, Ms Copeland has found fame outside of the ballet world.

She has appeared in commercials and TV shows and wrote a best-selling memoir.

“We haven’t had a ballet dancer who has broken through to popular culture like this since Mikhail Baryshnikov,” said Wendy Perron, an author and former editor of Dance Magazine…

Read the entire article here.

Joseph Emidy: From slave fiddler to classical violinist

BBC News
2015-06-21

Miles Davis, BBC News Online

Joseph Emidy led the Truro Philharmonic Orchestra

The remarkable life of a former slave who became a pioneer of classical music has been commemorated.

The “genius” violinist Joseph Emidy, from West Africa, was enslaved for two long periods of his eventful life.

But having finally gained his freedom in 1799, Emidy became “Britain’s first composer of the African diaspora”.

His achievements were marked at Truro Cathedral on Sunday with the erection of a ‘boss‘ – a painted wooden carving featuring a violin and a map of Africa.

On his death in 1835, The West Briton newspaper reported in Emidy’s obituary: “As an orchestral composer, his sinfonias may be mentioned as evincing not only deep musical research, but also those flights of genius.”…

…Emidy was finally discharged four years later in the port of Falmouth on 28 February 1799.

He married a local woman, Jenefer Hutchins, in 1802, started taking on music students and became involved with the the first of Truro’s biennial concerts in 1804.

Beverley Wilson (far right) the great, great, great, great grand-daughter of Joseph Emidy met kora player Sona Jobarteh (centre)

Silk Buckingham described him as “an exquisite violinist, a good composer, who led at all the concerts of the county, and who taught equally well the piano, violin, violoncello, clarionet and flute”…

Read the entire article here.