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Black Community

Here at Winchester, we have a diverse range of students and pride ourselves on having an inclusive and friendly community. Therefore, we aim to provide plenty of information and resources to our students.

This is a space for our Black student community, we have provided a range of resources that we hope will prove useful for our students, as well as providing a space for our students to share their thoughts.

If you have any suggestions, comments or feedback, we would love to hear from you! Fill out the Typeform below to have your say.

If you would like to have a chat about anything on this page or in general, please do contact the Student Union President, Alex at SU_PRES@winchester.ac.uk.

 

Black History Month 2024

This Black History Month's theme is 'Reclaiming Narratives' - for this, we wanted to shine a spotlight on various Black historical figures. Below, you will find some known, and some relatively unknown, black figures that have done remarkable things - read their narratives below!

Michelle Obama 

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is an American attorney and author who served as the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, being married to Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States. Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Obama is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. 

Through her four main initiatives, she has become a role model for women and an advocate for healthy families, service members and their families, higher education, and international adolescent girls education. In 2010, she launched Let’s Move!, bringing together community leaders, educators, medical professionals, parents, and others in a nationwide effort to address the challenge of childhood obesity.   

In 2011, Mrs. Obama and Dr. Jill Biden came together to launch Joining Forces, a nationwide initiative calling all Americans to rally around service members, veterans, and their families and support them through wellness, education, and employment opportunities.   

In 2014, Mrs. Obama launched the Reach Higher Initiative, an effort to inspire young people across America to take charge of their future by completing their education past high school, whether at a professional training program, a community college, or a four-year college or university. 

In 2015, Mrs. Obama joined President Obama to launch Let Girls Learn, a U.S. government-wide initiative to help girls around the world go to school and stay in school.   

Simon Woolley Baron Woolley of Woodford 

Simon Andrew Woolley, Baron Woolley of Woodford is a British politician and activist. He is the founder and director of Operation Black Vote (OBV) and Trustee of the charity Police Now, and has been Principal of Homerton College, Cambridge, since October 2021. 

Woolley became engaged with British politics, joining the campaign group Charter 88.He started to research the potential impact of a black vote, which he argued could influence electoral outcomes in marginal seats. These findings encouraged Woolley to launch Operation Black Vote (OBV) in 1996. Operation Black Vote has launched voter registration campaigns, an app to inspire and inform black and minority ethnic (BME) individuals and worked with Saatchi & Saatchi on a pro bono advertising campaign. 

Woolley also worked to empower communities and to integrate better politics education into the school curriculum. The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation estimated that Woolley's efforts encouraged millions of people to vote. Much of his work has been around nurturing BME civic and politic talent: the then Home Secretary Theresa May said in a speech in Westminster in 2016: "Today we celebrate a record number of BME MPs in parliament – 41. 

Angie Greaves 

Angie Greaves made history in the early 1990s as the first Black and Female drive-time DJ on London commercial radio. She remains the longest serving Black Woman in commercial radio in the UK and currently is a radio host on Smooth Radio, British Airways, and other platforms. 

Greaves started her media career in 1982 as a BBC Administrator at Television Centre. In 1986 she moved to London's Capital Radio, where she began working on the radio after being “discovered” by DJ David “Kid” Jensen. She was the first female presenter to join the station and was the only female drivetime DJ on London radio. 

Greaves went on to produce and present many long running, popular radio shows. She was the first DJ on Spectrum Radio at its launch on 25 June 1990. Between 1992 and 1997, Greaves presented the “Angie Greaves Breakfast Show” on Choice FM, London's first urban radio station. It became the most listened to show in the station's schedule and saw listening figures treble. 

In 1997, Greaves joined the BBC, presenting “Angie’s Sunday Magazine Show” on BBC London Live and the weekly “Angie Greaves Music Show” for BBC Three Counties Radio. During the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, Greaves moved to the city for six months to present the weekday Drive Time show on BBC Commonwealth Games Radio. 

Marley Dias 

Marley Dias is an American activist and writer. While Dias was in 6th grade, in November 2015, she launched a campaign called #1000BlackGirlBooks to collect 1,000 books with black female protagonists to donate for black girls at other schools in the U.S. 

When Dias was age 11, she complained to her mother that all of her mandatory readings were books about white boys and dogs. She said, "There wasn't really any freedom for me to read what I wanted." After speaking with her mother, Dias decided to start a book drive, #1000BlackGirlBooks, to bring more attention to literature featuring black female protagonists, with the goal to collect 1,000 books to donate for black girls to other schools. 

The book drive focuses specifically on books in which black girls are the main characters, not minor or background characters. Within a few months, more than 9,000 books were collected. Many of these books have been sent to a children's book drive in Jamaica. The campaign also called public attention to the lack of diversity in children's literature 

Gladys Bentley 

Bentley was a performer during the Harlem Renaissance. Donning a top hat and tuxedo, Bentley would sing the blues in Harlem establishments like the Clam House and the Ubangi Club. The New York Times said Bentley, who died in 1960 at the age of 52, was "Harlem's most famous lesbian" and "among the best-known Black entertainers in the United States." 

Her career skyrocketed when she appeared at Harry Hansberry's Clam House, a well-known gay speakeasy in New York in the 1920s, as a black, lesbian, cross-dressing performer. She headlined in the early 1930s at Harlem's Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She dressed in men's clothes (including a signature tail coat and top hat), played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting with women in the audience. 

On the decline of the Harlem speakeasies with the repeal of Prohibition, she relocated to southern California, where she was billed as "America's Greatest Sepia Piano Player" and the "Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs". She was frequently harassed for wearing men's clothing. She tried to continue her musical career but did not achieve as much success as she had had in the past. Bentley was openly lesbian early in her career, but later married. 

Wilston Samuel Jackson 

Wilston Samuel Jackson was Britain's first black train driver. For years Bill endured a fireman’s punishing regime, shovelling 10 to 12 tons of coal a day in hot and filthy conditions. He was overjoyed when in 1962 he passed his exams with flying colours to become a fully-fledged locomotive driver. However, Wilston continued to face adversity in the form of racism from his colleagues. 

On Bill’s first day as a driver, his allotted fireman told him he would not work with him. The fireman then repeated his decision to the foreman, who, surprisingly, told the fireman to go home as he no longer had a job. The traumatised fireman returned to where Bill was preparing the engine and asked if he could work with him. Bill replied, ‘I don’t have a problem with you, it is you who have a problem with me.  If you do your job well, we’ll get along fine’.  (-BHM UK) 

Wilfred Wood 

Wilfred Denniston Wood KA is a Barbadian-British Anglican minister who was the Bishop of Croydon from 1985 to 2003 (and the first area bishop there from 1991), the first black bishop in the Church of England. Wood was a champion for racial justice, launching several initiatives and serving on many committees such as the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants. 

Wood was a champion for racial justice, launching several initiatives and serving on many committees. In 1968, Wood and colleagues submitted proposals for the replacement of the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants (NCCI) with a Community Relations Commission that came to be known as "the Wood Proposals". The proposals called for some members to be directly elected by minority ethnic associations. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and a visit to London by his widow Coretta in 1969, he was instrumental with Canon L. John Collins in founding the UK's Martin Luther King Fund and Foundation. 

In 1992 he co-sponsored with David Sheppard, the then Bishop of Liverpool, a new set of race equality principles for employers, which became known as the "Wood-Sheppard Principles". He was Moderator of the Southwark Diocesan Race Relations Commission, the first of its kind in the Church of England, from its foundation. He also served as Moderator of the World Council of Churches's Programme to Combat Racism, 1977 - 1980, which was known for its support for humanitarian projects of southern African liberation movements at a crucial time in their struggle. In his last years as Bishop of Croydon, he protested at the honours given to Enoch Powell upon his death, stating, "Enoch Powell gave a certificate of respectability to white racist views which otherwise decent people were ashamed to acknowledge" and, in 2000 against the then British government's and opposition's negative attitudes to asylum seekers. 

Bystander Guide

active bystander guide by Winchester Student Union

 

 

Read

Black Students' Guide to Winchester - Created together with the Student Union, our representational networks, and the University

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh

'My name is Yewande': Misponouncing or changing people's names is just another form of racism by Yewande Biala

I Am Not Your Baby Mother by Candice Brathwaite

Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets by Feminista Jones

Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad

Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Staying Power, The history of black people in Britain by Peter Fryer

Black Cultural Archives and Google Arts & Culture

Information around Sickle Cell Disease, reccomended by our Afro-Caribbean Society

History Throught the Black Experience by Simon Hudson

Watch

When They See Us

  • A 2019 American crime drama miniseries, exploring the lives and events involving the 1989 Central Park jogger case - in which five Black and Latino male suspects were falsely accused and prosecuted.

Freedom Riders

 How to recognize your white privilege - and use it to fight inequality

"The New Jim Crow"

13TH

Reccomended by our very own Afro-Caribbean Network, why not check out the following films:

Listen

#TellBlackStories

Still Processing

Code Switch

  • A podcast exploring how race affects every part of society and making us all part of the conversation.

Inspire

Aima and Natasha

  • Students Aima and Natasha formed AllBlackLivesUK, a youth-led movement organising protests every week across the country.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham

  • An activist and co-founder of Campaign Zero. Brittany is an educator, activist and award-winning podcaster.

Anabelle Woghiren

  • A diversity and inclusion, anti-racism, human rights and social responsibility educator and activist. Annabelle uses her platform to teach and educate, bringing powerful education to the forefront.

Give

Stop Hate UK

  • A charity providing independent support to those affected by hate crime and challenges all forms of discrimination.

UK Black Pride

​​​​​​​Black Minds Matter

​​​​​​​SARI

​​​​​​​Southall Black Sisters

  • Southall Black Sisters work to highlight and challenge all forms of gender-based violences against women, primarily working to support the needs of Black Asian and African-Caribbean women.

Black Beetle Health

  • Black Beetle Health was born out of a desire to share the facts and statistics about the health experiences of LGBTQ+ People of Colour. This charity offers plenty of resources including but not limited to: Sexual Health & Wellbeing; Mental Health & Wellbeing; Chronic Illness Management, and more!

​​​​​​​Follow

Winchester Student Union

  • Facebook - Winchester Student Union
  • Twitter - @winchestersu
  • Instagram - @winch_su

​​​​​​​The Black History Lesson

  • Instagram - @theblackhistorylesson​​​​​​​