Born in 1909 in Chicago, ‘dancing anthropologist’ Katherine Dunham was known as the ‘matriarch and queen mother of Black dance.’ Her father was a descendant of enslaved West Africans and Madagascans, whilst her mother hailed from Canada. A multitalented artist, academic and activist, for many years Katherine Dunham ran the Katherine Dunham Dance Company, the only self-supporting African-American dance troupe in the mid-twentieth century. It was during this time that Dunham toured the United Kingdom, and in this special blog, …
African American history
At the British Newspaper Archive we are always delighted to hear how The Archive has been used to inform a range of different research interests. In this very special guest blog, Sidonia Serafini of Georgia College & State University and Barbara McCaskill of the University of Georgia take a look at the work of the Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford, Birmingham’s first Black minister, as reported in the British press, through the newspapers to be found in our collection. In March …
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In the years 1893 and 1894 pioneering African American investigative journalist and early civil rights leader Ida Bell Wells (1862-1931) visited Britain on a series of speaking tours. Ida Bell Wells Ida B. Wells, born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, had made it her mission to raise awareness of the brutal ramifications of the lynch law in the Southern States of America. This special blog will explore how Wells was received in Britain, and how the press of the …