Accused of being a ‘little Jim-Crow hostel’ by the Trinidadian writer George Padmore, Aggrey House was an institution founded by the British government to offer temporary accommodation to black students in London. Throughout the nine years of its existence from 1934 to 1943, the House was torn between its twin founding missions to both support black […]
A note on periodization
When did the Second World War start? On the surface this question is too easy even for a pub quiz. In the UK, most are familiar with Neville Chamberlain’s radio address on 3rd September 1939 dolefully telling the nation that the Nazi invasion of Poland had forced the British government to stand by its promise […]
An introduction to sources and method
As this introduction to the project explained, certain black people’s many and varied activities in the wartime city have been documented before. In this post, we’ll look at what we know so far and how using a GIS map helps join the dots in new ways, while introducing some of the new primary evidence on […]
A short introduction to Mapping Black London in WWII
The Second World War is hardly under-studied, to put it mildly. But there’s still a tendency to marginalize black people – as diverse a collection of individuals and communities as could be imagined – or skip them over altogether. This post delves into the reasons why the Mapping Black London in World War II project […]
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