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As a port, Southampton has a long history of immigration and of inhabitants and visitors from other races.
Jacques Francis was a sixteenth-century salvage diver working on the Mary Rose. (See Ten Black Tudors.)
The West Indian cricket team toured England in 1900, with two Black professional players, Float Woods and Tommie Burton. They arrived in Southampton in June 1900. Their matches included one, which they won, against Hampshire at the Southampton County Ground. They left Southampton in August 1900. A banquet was held for them by the West Indian Club, London, on 13 August 1900, at the Grand Hotel in London. (See Wikipedia.) They left Waterloo on 22 August 1900 on the boat train to Southampton to board RMS Don.
Ships to Southampton carrying West Indian immigrants in the 1940s include the Almanzora, December 1947, and the better-known Empire Windrush.
In the 1980s Southampton Museums and Libraries ran an oral history Caribbean Heritage Project (The Caribbean Connection). This is described in The Politics of the Past by P Gathercole and D Lowenthal.
Sotonopedia articles:
- African Caribbean Centre
- Joe Harriott
- John Malachi
- Thomas Anthony Pinckney
- Slavery and the Anti-Slavery Movement
- John Henderson Soga
External links:
- Daily Echo, launch of Black History Month 2018
- Slavery in Southampton
- Asian women in Southampton
- A Lunchtime Lecture given for God's House Tower by Dr Nazneen Ahmed, writer in residence for Southampton Stories, about "Gentlemen of colour, Indian contingents, Mahometan funerals – the BAME presence in 19th Century Southampton".
- Dr Ahmed can also be seen on this TEDxSouthampton video Why we need inclusive stories
Further reading:
A Black History of Southampton: From the 16th Century to the 21st Century, Don John and Stella Muirhead
"Slavery: the Southampton Connection," by Lilian King from the Local History Forum Journal no 7, Spring 1998
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