How are racism and stigma power linked? How can education empower us to face the past and tell new stories? And why must we break historical silences? Sociologist Imogen Tyler talks to fellow activists from Lancaster Black History Group, formed after a Black Lives Matter Vigil in the city in 2020 – which few know was once the fourth largest slave trading city in the UK.

Teacher Geraldine Onek – who came to the UK as a child refugee from Sudan – describes working with schoolchildren to teach them about slavery and centre the lives of Black Lancastrians. Student Jasmine Patel describes her research, with fellow school pupils, into the city’s slavery family trees. Together, they show how facing the past is empowering - and what anti-racism means.

Note: This episode was recorded in Nov 2022, at which point The Tate had not responded to this letter described by Jasmine Patel. .

Credits

Host: Imogen Tyler
Guests: Geraldine Onek & Jasmine Patel
Executive & Development Producer: Alice Bloch
Project Lead: Imogen Tyler
Project Officer: Danielle Galway
Sound Engineer: David Crackles
Music & Artwork: Bruce Bennett

Episode resources

• Lancaster Black History Group feat. resources for schools
• The slave trade and the economic development of eighteenth-century Lancaster Melinda Elder (1992)
• Race, the Floating Signifier Stuart Hall (1997)
• Doing reparatory history: bringing ‘race’ and slavery home Catherine Hall (2018)
• Ghostly Presences, Servants and Runaways: Lancaster's Emerging Black Histories and their Memorialization 1687–1865 by Alan Rice (2020) in Britain’s Black Past ed. Gretchen Gerzina
• Freedom Seekers: Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London - Simon Newman (2022)
• The Liverpool Slave Trade, Lancaster and its Environs Melinda Elder (2007)
• A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution Toby Green (2020)
• Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage Sowande’ Mustakeem (2016)
• The Slave Ship: A Human History Marcus Rediker (2008)
• Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora Stephanie Smallwood (2008)
• Blood Legacy: Reckoning with a Family’s Story of Slavery Alex Renton (2021)
• Sugar in the Blood: A Family's Story of Slavery and Empire Andrea Stuart (2012)

Find extended reading lists and learn more about The Stigma Conversations at The Sociological Review

Take Action!

The Slavery Family Trees project
Lancaster Black History Group
The Judges’ Lodgings Museum
International Slavery Museum