Find out more: Brixton Black Women’s Group and OWAAD

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.

Front of the OWAAD Constitution booklet

This week’s Find Out More blog is for the Brixton Black Women’s Group and Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent (OWAAD), and the Black women’s movement more widely. 

The Black Cultural Archives has a fantastic subject guide on the Black Women’s Movement with a detailed timeline, further reading list, and outline of the movement and health, education, organisation and work.

This article titled ‘Black Women Organising’ originally appeared in Feminist Review in 1984 and was republished by libcom.org, interviewing some key members of the Brixton Black Women’s Group about the rise and fall of OWAAD. It’s particularly helpful and relevant to those involved in organising today.

This in-depth interview with Brixton Black Women’s Group members Olive Gallimore, Melba Wilson and Gail Lewis was originally published in 1990 by Trouble & Strife and republished by Past Tense is phenomenally detailed and candid.

Here’s a detailed interview with OWAAD co-founder Stella Dadzie from Black Women Radicals about activism, and the landmark book she co-authored in 1985 ‘The Heart of the Race’.

As part of the Sisterhood project from the British Library interviews were conducted with women active in the 1960s-1980s, including Stella Dadzie, Gail Lewis, and Mia Morris.

And there’s another interview with Brixton Black Women’s Group member and OWAAD co-founder Gail Lewis from Verso. 

This thesis from Bethany Warner from the University of Bristol is called ‘The Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent: constructing a collective identity’ and looks at how the identity of ‘black women’ was configured by OWAAD.

This issue of the Multinational Monitor from 1985 tells the whole sordid story of the contraceptive Depo-Provera which was used on women around the world, especially in the Global South.

Black women’s group co-founder Liz Obi created a project to remember her dear friend Olive Morris. This book collects reflections, and details historical context, and there is a collective dedicated to remembering Olive.

There are two paid resources on this list; two books that are HOT off the press. First, as part of the Lawrence Wishart Radical Black Women series, Gerlin Bean ‘Mother of the Movement’ by AS Francis, and secondly from Verso, Speak Out, the writings of the Brixton Black Women’s Group.

Stella Dadzie wrote an important article for this year’s Black History Month in i news entitled ‘The Black British women’s movement I helped build 40 years ago is still fighting the same battle’, reflecting on where we are now.

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.