Black Cultural Archives

Cataloguing archives at Black Cultural Archives

The archive at Black Cultural Archives is very much a ‘living archive’ – it is ever-evolving and ever-changing, not only through research but also through the donation of materials from individuals and organisations alike.

In 2015, we took in 57 separate donations (‘accessions’), ranging greatly in size, format, and topic. How does that material go from being donated to being available in our reading room or included in one of our exhibitions? The material must be ‘catalogued’, that is, described in such as a way as to help researchers find the material and to best understand it. Following international standards, specific key information (‘metadata’) is provided, such as dates, titles, formats, and brief descriptions of content and context, to ultimately help aid the researcher in accessing the material.

The cataloguing process is, unfortunately for archivists and researchers alike, time-intensive and many archives suffer from a cataloguing backlog. To help alleviate what can be a lengthy time between the acquisition of material from a donor, to the time when it is catalogued and available for use, Black Cultural Archives provides information about the accessioned material on The National Archives’ Discovery catalogue (http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/). This provides a brief overview of the donated material so that it can still be found and accessed in the reading room at our heritage centre.

This information is also available to our own website (http://bcaheritage.org.uk/collections/search/). For the Collections team at Black Cultural Archives, it is very important that access to our archive material is not restricted just because it has not been fully catalogued yet.

 Cecil Gutzmore collection

One of the 57 donations made in 2015 were the papers of Cecil Gutzmore, relating to the Brixton Defence Campaign. As the Assistant Archivist, I have recently just finished cataloguing this collection and the aim of this post is not only to explain a little bit about the cataloguing process, as I have done, but also to provide an overview of the Gutzmore papers and, hopefully, inspire you to come and access this original archive material for yourself.

The Brixton Defence Campaign was formed in 1981, mainly through combining the forces of the Brixton Black Women’s Group (BBWG) and the Black People Against State Harassment (BASH). In its own press statement, the campaign group states that it formed to 'co-ordinate the defence of those arrested during the Brixton Uprising and to support those who continue to be victimised' [GUTZMORE/1/24]. It worked alongside the Brixton Legal Defence Group, based at Brixton Law Centre, which carried out legal and political defence and support work.

The Brixton Uprising took place on the weekend of the 10-12 April 1981 and saw clashes between the predominantly Black youth of Brixton and the Metropolitan police force. Further uprisings took place throughout the country in the months after April 1981. A public inquiry was conducted into the uprisings of 1981, resulting in a published report; this report, called the Scarman report, concluded that later uprisings were copycat disturbances.

Mary Evans, in Transatlantic Conversations: Feminism and Travelling Theory (Routledge, 2016) describes the Brixton Defence Campaign, of which Gutzmore was a ‘key figure’, as a campaign which ‘offered legal and political defence and monitored the activities of the police and the direction of thinking that culminated in the Scarman report into the causes of the riots (or what we referred to as riotous rebellion)’ (p. 172).

The Brixton Defence Campaign called for a boycott of the Scarman Inquiry, amongst other demands, as it argued that the evidence in the inquiry 'can only further incriminate defendants and that the recommendations of the inquiry will further oppress the Black communities of this country' [GUTZMORE/1/2/4].

Following archival standards, the papers donated by Gutzmore have been catalogued into a hierarchical structure, and include correspondence, minutes, notes, publications, press cuttings, and ephemera. The structure was devised to complement our other collections at Black Cultural Archives and is as follows:

 GUTZMORE/ The Papers of Cecil Gutzmore:

GUTZMORE/1 The papers of, and relating to, the Brixton Defence Campaign.

GUTZMORE/1/1 The organisational papers of the Brixton Defence Campaign

GUTZMORE/1/2 Brixton Defence Campaign correspondence

GUTZMORE/1/3 Minutes and notes from meetings of, and relating to, the     Brixton Defence Campaign

GUTZMORE/1/4 "Brixton Legal Defence Group"

GUTZMORE/1/5 Transcripts relating to the Scarman Inquiry

GUTZMORE/1/6 Published material of, and relating to, the Brixton Defence Campaign

GUTZMORE/1/7 Ephemera of, and relating to, the Brixton Defence Campaign

Gutzmore’s papers link in with a number of other collections in the archive, including but not limited to the Brixton Defence Campaign material donated by Jan McKenley (MCKENLEY/3/1), our UPRISINGS/ collection, and some of the oral histories collected as part of the Heart of the Race project, which collected testimonies from a range of Black women involved in the movement for the rights of Black women in the UK. Also held within our collection is the sixth issue of the Brixton Defence Campaign Bulletin (PERIODICALS/54), which complements the four issues in GUTZMORE/1/6.

Gutzmore’s papers were also donated alongside two objects. Our Collections Policy states that we do not actively add to our small object collection, but we do take in objects when they form an integral part of a whole collection. Gutzmore’s papers were donated alongside a Brixton Defence Campaign t-shirt (BCA – 327) and banner (BCA – 328). Further donations have already been made by Gutzmore to the collection, with the addition of daily transcripts from the hearings held by Lord Scarman during his official inquiry into the 1981 uprisings.

The Gutzmore papers are a valuable addition to Black Cultural Archives’ collections, not only complementing existing collections, but also allowing researchers access to original material that helps to tell a more complete narrative of social history in the UK in the 1980s, a history which can be told from the ‘bottom-up’ through material such as Gutzmore’s papers.

 Accessing archive material at Black Cultural Archives

Archive material can be accessed in the reading room at our heritage centre in Brixton. Reading room opening times:

Wednesday-Friday, 10am-4pm 2nd Thursday of every month, 1pm-7pm (late night opening) Saturday, 1pm-4pm (library browsing only)

We do ask that researchers book appointments to view archive material at least a week in advance and send through a list of references for the material they would like to view, so that we can retrieve the material in advance of your booked appointment. Please email the Collections team at [email protected] or call the team on 0203 757 8510 or 0203 757 8511 to book an appointment or if you have any enquiries.

For more information about Black Cultural Archives’ Collection and the Cecil Gutzmore’s papers on the Brixton Defence Campaign, contact:

The Beatles, Adele, Amy Winehouse these are all artists who have successfully managed global appeal transcending cultural barriers across the world. However when it comes to the genre of hip hop and hip hop artists it’s a different story. British Hip Hop seems to be the one genre which doesn’t have success. Therefore for the next five days we have decided to sift through our vinyls and take a look at British Hip Hop Artists from a seminal decade. The 1980s. 

The building known as Raleigh Hall began life as two domestic houses, numbers 1 and 3 Effra Road.

At the time of creation in 1810, Effra Road was part of the Heathrow Manor which was created between 1791 and 1806 by the owner, Robert Stone. However, Robert Stone died in 1820 leaving his young family with so many debts that they were forced to sell the land, finally selling the land that included Effra Road by auction in 1824.

Prior to 1882 and the standardisation of the numbers along Effra Road the buildings were known as Goethe House, becoming Dane House (no.1) and Effra House (no. 3). However, Effra House should not be confused with Effra Hall, which was the house owned by Robert Stone, and after his death became a lunatic asylum.   Effra Hall appears to have been demolished to make way for new roads, such as Saltoun Road which was created in 1874.

Both buildings were used a private residences until 1886 when 1 Effra Road became a Ladies Boarding School, run by Miss A.E Parry. During this time in Brixton a number of boarding houses and independent schools sprung up, catering for the education of the growing professional and middle classes. The largest and most enduring at this time was the Gresham Hall which hosted a number of musical evenings and ran a number of educational classes. The Boarding School was short lived, closing its doors by 1889.

At the same time, 3 Effra Road became the headquarters of the Brixton Liberal Club. Once the Boarding School closed, 1 Effra Road became the accommodation of the Honorary Secretary, William Bourne (later occupied by his widow Mrs. Bourne). There were many other Liberal Clubs in Lambeth at this time, including the Herne Hill Liberal Club, and the Brixton Liberal Association. Unfortunately, there are no available archives on the Brixton Liberal Club, but it is likely that it served as a meeting place, social centre (there is a dance card in Lambeth archives) and lecture hall. The Brixton Liberal Club was wound up around 1894.

Between 1896 and 1925 both buildings became the Raleigh College for Boys. The longest serving headmaster of the College was Albert Hillam Ozzard, from 1900-1916. [A Hillam Ozzard appears on the census for 1901 and 1911 and in De Bretts 1914. It appears he was the son of Colonel A H Ozzard, who was a commander in the Royal Marines Light Infantry and who may have fought in Egypt].

After briefly becoming the Sartell School for Dancing (Raleigh College) from 1922-1926, 1-3 Effra Road became Raleigh Club, owned by Keith & Boyle London Ltd. Motor coach proprietors. This probably has some connection to the Orange Luxury Motor Coach Station which operated from Effra Road Brixton, now Windrush Square and which was the first motor coach station in the County of London. The company ran services from London to Brighton, including a stop in Brixton until the 1960s.

In the 1960’s the ownership of the building (by now known as Raleigh Hall works) passed to Lambeth Council, where this once splendid building fell into disrepair, mirroring the social and economic fortunes of the community on its doorstep.

The meeting hall was sold off separately from the rest of building in 1997 to its tenants the Raleigh Furniture Workshops, who still occupy it.

The building known as Raleigh Hall began life as two domestic houses, numbers 1 and 3 Effra Road.

At the time of creation in 1810, Effra Road was part of the Heathrow Manor which was created between 1791 and 1806 by the owner, Robert Stone. However, Robert Stone died in 1820 leaving his young family with so many debts that they were forced to sell the land, finally selling the land that included Effra Road by auction in 1824.

Prior to 1882 and the standardisation of the numbers along Effra Road the buildings were known as Goethe House, becoming Dane House (no.1) and Effra House (no. 3). However, Effra House should not be confused with Effra Hall, which was the house owned by Robert Stone, and after his death became a lunatic asylum.   Effra Hall appears to have been demolished to make way for new roads, such as Saltoun Road which was created in 1874.

Both buildings were used a private residences until 1886 when 1 Effra Road became a Ladies Boarding School, run by Miss A.E Parry. During this time in Brixton a number of boarding houses and independent schools sprung up, catering for the education of the growing professional and middle classes. The largest and most enduring at this time was the Gresham Hall which hosted a number of musical evenings and ran a number of educational classes. The Boarding School was short lived, closing its doors by 1889.

At the same time, 3 Effra Road became the headquarters of the Brixton Liberal Club. Once the Boarding School closed, 1 Effra Road became the accommodation of the Honorary Secretary, William Bourne (later occupied by his widow Mrs. Bourne). There were many other Liberal Clubs in Lambeth at this time, including the Herne Hill Liberal Club, and the Brixton Liberal Association. Unfortunately, there are no available archives on the Brixton Liberal Club, but it is likely that it served as a meeting place, social centre (there is a dance card in Lambeth archives) and lecture hall. The Brixton Liberal Club was wound up around 1894.

Between 1896 and 1925 both buildings became the Raleigh College for Boys. The longest serving headmaster of the College was Albert Hillam Ozzard, from 1900-1916. [A Hillam Ozzard appears on the census for 1901 and 1911 and in De Bretts 1914. It appears he was the son of Colonel A H Ozzard, who was a commander in the Royal Marines Light Infantry and who may have fought in Egypt].

After briefly becoming the Sartell School for Dancing (Raleigh College) from 1922-1926, 1-3 Effra Road became Raleigh Club, owned by Keith & Boyle London Ltd. Motor coach proprietors. This probably has some connection to the Orange Luxury Motor Coach Station which operated from Effra Road Brixton, now Windrush Square and which was the first motor coach station in the County of London. The company ran services from London to Brighton, including a stop in Brixton until the 1960s.

In the 1960’s the ownership of the building (by now known as Raleigh Hall works) passed to Lambeth Council, where this once splendid building fell into disrepair, mirroring the social and economic fortunes of the community on its doorstep.

1981 our mission began, 2015 the journey continues. Follow us for twenty days celebrating the highlights over the last 30 years.  #PeoplePower #donate50

We have dug into our archive to relive our most celebrated memories., Black Cultural Archives opened its doors in 2014 and became the UK’s first Black heritage centre. Our future vision is a bold commitment to present a coherent record of the contributions of Black people in Britain and encourages dialogue on issues that really matter today.  

Our target is to raise £50,000 by March 2016 to ensure the vision ignited over 30 years ago continues to fuel the imagination of future generations, and we need your support to make this happen.

Written by Emma Harrison

Founded in 1981, Black Cultural Archives’ mission is to collect, preserve and celebrate the heritage and history of Black people in Britain.

Black Cultural Archives have opened the UK’s first dedicated Black heritage centre in Brixton, London, in July 2014. Our unparalleled and growing archive collection offers insight into the history of people of African and Caribbean descent in Britain. The bulk of the collection is drawn from the twentieth century to the present day, while some materials date as far back as the second century. The collection includes personal papers, organisational records, rare books, ephemera, photographs, and a small object collection.

Our work at Black Cultural Archives recognises the importance of untold stories and providing a platform to encourage enquiry and dialogue. We place people and their historical accounts at the heart of everything we do.

The current exhibition at Black Cultural Archives is Black Georgians: The Shock of the Familiar. Imagining the Georgian period awakens images from Jane Austen’s parlour to Hogarth’s Gin Lane. Black Cultural Archives’ new exhibition takes you on a journey a long way from these quintessential English images. This new exhibition interrogates the seams between the all-too-often prettified costume period dramas and the very different existence of hardship, grime, disease, and violence that was the reality for many.

This exhibition will reveal the everyday lives of Black people during the Georgian period (1714-1830). It will offer a rich array of historical evidence and archival materials that present a surprising, sometimes shocking, and inspiring picture of Georgian Britain.

The Black Georgian narrative not only challenges preconceptions of the Black presence in Britain being restricted to post World War II, but it speaks to us of a growing population that forged a new identity with creativity, adaptability, and remarkable fortitude. It is a complex picture: while there was much oppression and restriction, there was also a degree of social mobility and integration.

                        Phyllis Wheatley, Ref. No PHOTOS/25 © unknown

Key individuals form the backbone to the exhibition, including Phillis Wheatley, the subject of this article in particular. Aged only seven, Wheatley was brought to Boston, United States, and sold as a child servant to the all-white Wheatley family in 1761. At the time, Boston was home to only 15,000 people, 800 of whom were of African descent; only 20 of these 800 were “free” individuals and not enslaved.[1] From the start, it was clear to the Wheatley family that Phillis was an extraordinary child, referred to by critics today as a ‘child prodigy’,[2] who ‘gave indications of uncommon intelligence’.[3] Susanna Wheatley, the mistress of the Wheatley family, recognised this extraordinary flair of intuitive intelligence, fostering the intellectual development of Phillis by allowing her to learn to read and write, learn Latin and to read the Bible. One may ask, why was Phillis saved from the usual domestic chores which was expected of the other servants? Vincent Carretta argues that Susanna’s attention may have been ‘a kind of social experiment to discover what effect education might have on an African’ or, perhaps, that Phillis reminded Susanna of the daughter she had lost years earlier.[4] Though we can never be certain as to why Susanna felt compelled to provide for Phillis in the manner that she did, we can see how it undoubtedly shaped the young child, with Wheatley later becoming the first African-American woman to publish poetry.

Wheatley’s first volume of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, was first published in England in 1773, the same year that she visited London. Wheatley was viewed by many during her trip to London as a “celebrity” of the day, though she was of course not without her critics; Wheatley had to prove the authenticity of her authorship, for many doubted that a women, more especially a former enslaved individual, could be capable of producing the poetry that she published.

Unfortunately, Wheatley’s life was short, dying at the young age of 31. She had married another free Black man, John Peters, in 1778, but despite the promising turn of events in her earlier life, including literary fame as the first female African-American poet, Wheatley died in poverty in 1784, having struggled to publish any further poetry.

Though short, Wheatley’s life was certainly remarkable, although there is still relatively little known about her beyond the basic facts, and less still known about her former years before being brought to Boston. Black Cultural Archives has previously recognised the remarkable life of Wheatley, highlighting her in a previous newsletter from 1992 as a ‘personality of the month’; this newsletter is part of our archival collection today, and can be found under the reference BCA/6/4/7.

Phillis Wheatley will be the focus of the free Treasures in the Archive lunchtime talk on the 17thDecember, delivered by the Assistant Archivist, Emma Harrison; Black Cultural Archives do ask that spaces are booked for the free event, using the Eventbrite page, as there is a limit on space capacity. Wheatley and other prominent figures from the Georgian period can be explored further in the Black Georgians exhibition at Black Cultural Archives, which runs from the 9th October 2015 – 9th April 2016. For those who wish to interrogate and explore archival material relating to the Black Georgians exhibition, you are able to search our online catalogue (http://www.calmview.eu/BCA/CalmView/advanced.aspx?src=DServe.Catalog ). Archival material can be viewed by emailing [email protected] to book an appointment in the reading room, which is open for archive appointments Wednesday-Friday 10am-4pm, and every second Thursday of the month 1pm-7pm.

[1] Vincent Carretta, Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage (London: The University of Georgia Press, 2011), p. 1.

[2] Peter Fryer, Staying Power (New York: Pluto Press, 2010), p. 91.

[3] William H. Robinson, Phillis Wheatley in the Black American Beginnings (Detroit: Broadside Press, 1975).

I spun 13 fairy Negro tales that night. Weighed them on illogic scales that tipped the balance and formed an alliance with my version of the truth, I uprooted reality and substituted it for another that had more humanity; thinking that if I thought hard enough I’d make it real. Having so much belief in mind power I cowered beneath the defunct light and attempted to bend Saturn’s rings around my mind. I did this till the blinds let light in to wake me from that super sonic slumber. I swore I was under the influence of lightening that struck my brain and convinced me I could stain worlds at a time.

But I realised it was just beer and wine.

I found I could dine on the sun drink the milky-way let stars sticks to my tongue clasp Orion around my waist pluck Pluto, paste him to Mars and run before Zeus realised I had face-lifted his estate.

I found I could reverse 360 from the 3 point line and dunk Jupiter in a black hole. But this divine world existed only in my soul.

So I held my 13 Negro tales and made a back bone swapped it for my own stood to the wind and dared earth to spin me off it’s shoulders not knowing I had soldered my pen to its core and “ink”- planted a metaphor.

And perhaps this was just in my mind, but I’d envisioned my self as a poet, so let it be ’cause I write this not for you, just for me. I’m trying to make the world a lil’ better by building bridges out of letters trying to break the sound barrier and obliterate the colour lines, ’cause I was taught race was in the mind: You can unwrap the illusions and unwind to the sound of rainbow drops falling on all proletarian props.

I speak thus for I fell in love with an Iranian girl who complimented my soul. She had no colour; just a diamond backbone. I looked in her eyes and saw five stories for each tale I owned. Though we never dated, she sowed a seed in me and I reap the fruits regularly and mix the juice with ink, so when I write about love it tends to smell of her.

She is my virtue and my curse.

I guess I’m a fairy tale less now, guess I have to chill at bus stops and smoke sess now, guess I have to trail blaze and be like “yes now” to every soul who gazes at me trying to guess how I can talk to myself and care less about the effects of stress. It’s cause Spokenword is like sex, The more you listen, the better it gets.

That’s why on long bus rides, I close my eyes and try to hear drumbeats from Nigeria- the mother land calling. I be like “yes mum, I’m hearing ya” It’s like some ciphered world with armies of sounds and underground cultures with talon-less vultures trying to pierce my skin and place talking drums within.

But Hip Hop takes over and my head bobs to the beats of a different soldier and it’s gotten colder on this side of thought ’cause now, I hear dreams money bought.

Driven despondent by this I close my eyes tighter and think a little deeper. I see aquatic worlds ruled by Soulquarians, gods that remix bubbles with beats so we inhale music swap smiles for CD’s do voodoo just for the hell of it and there is no pressure if you choose to be celibate.

That’s another fairy tale gone. That’s another scenario I’d offered to the Sun to run on Monday mornings when workers are still torn between workdays and fun.

A world without guns when the only people running are kids chasing nuns for trying to convert them when their teeth were still gums.

But the sun shrugged his shoulders and shoved my idea where he couldn’t see. Telling me the cosmos didn’t agree, telling me humanity needed drama in order to be free. So I popped my middle finger for Martin Luther King, Seamus Heaney and Palestine’s plea, ’cause you shouldn’t need to suffer to be granted mercy, post-depression insurrection is not a way to be.

But this world exists between the purple evenings that serve as backdrops to my reasoning and nestle hopes of seasoning the world with constructive dope, to raise minds to that nexus in the sky distill the plexus and finally understand why Tupac, Biggie and Jim Morrison had to die.

I guess I’m more fairy tales less now guess it’s best if I tell you the rest now; like how roots are looped through violin strings and red mists faded yellow yell: “the last bohemian lives!”… like how Alice never loved in Never Land and The last Rebels rise to remix riffs…

But the last fairy story goes a bit like this: I sit on a mountain top with my Iranian scented ink trace words on winds sink to blue worlds drink nectar and think…

 and    think.