Find out more: British Black Power & the Mangrove Nine
Over the next ten weeks I will share resources to find out more about each of the movements I discuss in The Shoulders We Stand On: How Black and Brown people fought for change in the UK.
The resources will mostly be free, and will cover a range of mediums including articles, videos, podcasts and radio programmes. Follow me on Twitter to be the first to know when a new list has been posted.
A campaign poster for the Mangrove Nine.
It’s week three already! British Black Power groups and the controversial court case of the Mangrove Nine are the subjects of this week’s further reading list.
Ashley John-Baptiste’s essay for the BBC is an excellent starting point, with incredible details and photos.
Black Power groups were surveilled by the state and there was reportedly a Black Power Desk within Special Branch. Read about this surveillance and see files obtained using Freedom of Information requests.
The UK government took a lot of photos, including at the Mangrove protest. See some of them here from The National Archive (and one of them is in the book!).
Rosie Wild’s thesis entitled ‘“Black was the colour of our fight”: Black Power in Britain, 1955-1976’ is an invaluable source of information about the rise and fall of Black Power.
Anne-Marie Angelo is another academic with phenomenal work on Black Power in the UK, see here ‘The Black Panthers in London, 1967-1972’.
Neil Kenlock was a Black Panther member and photographer. Read an interview with him here and see some photos.
Bryan Knight’s fantastic Tell A Friend podcast has interviews with Neil Kenlock, as well as Black Power adherents Roy Sawh and Beverley Bryan.
This hour-long documentary from Radio 4 tells the story of the British Black Panthers.
On the Darcus Howe YouTube channel you can see clips of Howe talking, and discussions about movements he was involved in.
This history has been vastly overlooked, and the role of women has been even more undervalued. Here is a gal-dem article on five female British Black Panthers you should know about.
The leader of the British Black Panthers, Altheia Jones-LeCointe, has done very few interviews, but here is a rare one you can listen to from the Organised Youth project.
Steve McQueen did a phenomenal fictional retelling of the Mangrove Nine story in his series Small Axe in 2020 which you can still catch on BBC iPlayer in the UK, or Amazon Prime.
And if you are seeing this but haven’t read the book I’m referring to, then what are you waiting for?! Get your copy of The Shoulders We Stand On now.