Black History Month
on BBC 1Xtra

Throughout the month of October BBC 1Xtra will be celebrating the achievements, events, and black music icons that have contributed to this history over the last 5 decades. Each week we will be looking at a different decade focussing on the music, the politics and the drama that define that period in time.

Learn about the 1960s

Learn about the 1970s

Learn about the 1980s

Learn about the 1990s

Learn about the 2000s

The life of Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was the son of one of South Africa’s leading dignitaries, Chief Henry Mandela of the Tembu Tribe, and it was as a young law student that he became involved in opposition to the white minority regime

Joining the African National Congress (ANC) in 1942, he co-founded its more dynamic Youth League two years later.

Africans were brought to London in the late 16th century because of Britain's role in the slave trade. By the mid-18th century, the capital had a significant free Black population. Fewer Black people came to London after slavery had been abolished throughout the British Empire in 1833, and the community declined during the 19th century.

Claudia Jones was a leading figure in London's Caribbean community from 1955 until her early death in 1964. She founded The West Indian Gazette, and is known as 'the mother of the Notting Hill Carnival'.

Joe Clough was born in Jamaica in 1887 and orphaned at an early age. He became the first Black bus driver of a London motorbus.

As a boy, he was employed by a Scottish doctor, Dr R C White, to look after his polo ponies. In 1905 while they were returning from a dance at the governor's house in Kingston, they had a conversation that was to change Clough's life. Dr White asked him, 'How would you like to go to England?' 'Well,' replied Clough, 'I'd like that very much'. He was 18 years old.

Devotional Series

Celebrating Black female singers in British entertainment, this unique display is the latest development in the ‘Devotional Series’, a body of work by the artist Sonia Boyce

The display takes the form of an elaborately hand-drawn installation on the gallery walls: a roll call of one hundred and eighty names. The names will be illustrated by portraits of several of the singers, among them Shirley Bassey, Joan Armatrading, Des’ree and Ms.Dynamite.

The history of black people in Britain certainly goes back a long way - well before the reign of Queen Victoria. There were Black people in Britain in Roman times, and there has been a continuous Black presence here since 1555. For Shakespeare’s London audiences, Black faces would have been a familiar sight.

“In 1731, the Lord Mayor of London, responding to moral panics about the size of the non-white population in the city, banned them from holding company apprenticeships.”

Filling in the blank pages

October is Black History Month, but students and officers could be forgiven for wondering how that fits in with their union work and with their union priorities of fighting the lifting of the cap, making their union democracy work better and making commercial services relevant to their members. Ruqayyah Collector, NUS Black Students’ Officer, explains how.....

Pic: Ruqayyah Collector

Manchester Explores Myths About Race

Explore issues around the racist thinking which underpinned the trans-Atlantic slave trade in this new exhibition marking the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act.

Figures suggest that there are a significant number of black boys underachieving at school. Headliners reporter Ashleigh Rennalls-Griffiths, 15, went to see meet young people on a project that is trying to reverse that trend.

For whom the bells toll

Many of us are aware of the historical contribution made by Gurkhas to the fighting strength of the British Army, and the involvement of troops from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa during the two World Wars. However far fewer of us know about the contribution made by military and civilian personnel from other parts of the British Empire and Commonwealth; particularly those from Africa, the Indian sub-continent, the rest of Asia (including Hong Kong) and the West Indies. The men and women from these countries served in theatres of war throughout the world, many in the front-line, working as infantrymen, pilots and seamen.

As the Science Museum pays tribute to the world’s great scientists and inventors, BHM reveals the people behind some of the most life-changing inventions and discoveries in scientific history.

Black History month is an opportunity to remember all the black men and women who have contributed in history. But last month I was privileged to meet a living black hero Nelson Mandela, writes Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington

Black Oxford: Untold Stories, launched last year on the 5th October at the Oxford University Natural History Museum, is the first black heritage project which includes a guided heritage walking tour, an exhibition and book.