Key stories 2
"We the people who are darker than blue”
So Mum, how come there are no Black ballet dancers, no Black painters, no celebrated writers, and no ugly White people? And why did that man spit at me and call me n*****?
I was so embarrassed by studying Shakespeare’s Othello, with all the other girls in the class looking at me every English lesson that it’s a wonder I passed any exams!
My Grammar school was literally a stone’s throw from Hogarth’s House and we visited it frequently. Talk about colour blind: if my classmates had seen any Black people in the prints, they would have gleefully pointed them out to me. I returned to Hogarth’s House as an adult, after I had discovered the Rake’s Progress series, and saw – meaning synched brain and eyes – Black characters in real time.
Who could have predicted 60 years later the Black Chiswick through History Project would be established:
Spiritual by Undine Smith-Moore: “Watch and Pray: mamma is massa going to sell us tomorrow?”