By Dr Anne-Marie Evans and Dr Sarah Lawson-Welsh
With thanks to Dr Janine Bradbury, Dr Kaley Kramer and Dr Fraser Mann
This week at York St John University, around 50 staff and students attended an event entitled ‘Black History Month and the Transatlantic Imagination’. They listened to short micro-lectures by staff on the boycotting of cotton from the US confederate (pro slave-owning) states by nineteenth-century Lancashire textile workers, the music of Miles Davis and of The Belleville Three, the Black Panther Marvel comics, the role of Journées Africaines and why Black History Month does not, as yet, exist in France, and the transatlantic life and legacies of Caribbean-born writer and historian, C.L.R. James. After the session, a student commented that she was proud to be at an institution where Black History Month was given such prominence. Events like this are hugely important. We know that we are not alone in this, and that colleagues in HE institutions all over the country are involved in fantastic public engagement and widening participation initiatives in collaboration with Black History Month.
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