Find out about Bristol’s Black History with Bristol Museums. Who were the first Black people in Bristol? What are the city’s links to Somalia? What are the legacies of the Slave Trade?
Here you’ll find stories, blog posts and events from Bristol Museums related to Black History.
TOUR: Our Difficult Conversations tour offers you a different view of our collections and an insight into the complex ethics of museums in the modern world.
By walk guide Mark Steeds, author and historian from Bristol Radical History Group
Starting at M Shed, this walk around central Bristol explores the city’s thousand-year involvement in the slave trade, examining what’s been memorialised and what has…
During protests against police brutality and racial inequality on 7 June 2020, people left placards at the base of the Colston statue plinth. This began before the statue was pulled down and continued a…
Henrietta Coppin was a Black woman who lived in Bristol in the 19th century. She worked as a dressmaker and her father and husbands all worked at sea. She lived mostly in the parish of St Michael’s, where other Black mariners had settled for many years. Henrietta had some difficult experiences, which mean that her life is well documented in archival records and newspapers.
Using archival records, we have explored the life of John Quaco. He was a Black man from Bristol who served on merchant ships. As a seaman, his career is documented in a range of records that tell us a little about his work. Other records give glimpses of his life in Bristol.
For some years, researchers have gathered evidence of Bristol’s historic black population. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, staff at Bristol Archives spent time bringing all this research together.
A chance discovery of a book by Okot p’Bitek set Antonette Clarke Akalanne on a journey. It opened up a whole world of African thought and writing. Okot p’Bitek challenged the distorted way in which Western scholars had viewed Africa. He was a poet, an athlete and a pioneer of decolonisation. And he studied right here in Bristol. Antonette tells us why he matters.