In an assembly last month, our school community reflected on the significance of Black History Month.
Holly Webb – Assistant Head – Sixth Form shared how, despite having delivered many assemblies on this topic over the years, she still finds the task daunting.
Below is her assembly in full:
Black history has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember yet condensing the experiences of millions of people across continents and centuries into a short presentation without being tokenistic or superficial is a real challenge.
That is why I always return to the most important question: why does Black history matter? For me, the answer lies in compassion. Teaching history is, at its core, about helping us connect with people who are nothing like us, people we will never meet, by trying to understand, remember, and celebrate them. Excluding any group from that opportunity would go against my philosophy as a teacher and our values as a school.
History, after all, is not the same as the past. The past is everything that has ever happened; history is the photo album we create from those moments. We choose what to include, what to leave out, and how to caption it. Black History Month exists because, time and again, certain stories were left out of those albums. Every October, we take time to uncover and celebrate the moments that make our shared history richer and more complex. As historian Onyeka Nubia reminds us, rather than seeing this as political or controversial, “we should be excited to learn about another aspect of England’s past which until now has been obscured.”
Exploring Black history is exciting. It’s an opportunity to uncover hidden stories and voices that deserve to be heard. With that in mind, I invited some of our History students to help challenge common myths and misconceptions about Black History Month. Below are the common myths and misconceptions they shared.
Myth 1 ‘Black British history is the recent history of immigration’
Reality – Black history has always been part of British history
When many people think of Black history, they might think of images from the last 50-100 years: the Windrush generation arriving from the Caribbean, Notting Hill carnival, or perhaps the Bristol Bus Boycott. The reality is that Black people have been living in Britain for centuries. If you go back to the Medieval period, the race of individuals is rarely mentioned in historical records. This isn’t because there was no diversity in Britain. Racial ideas around ‘Blackness’ and ‘Whiteness’ only became commonplace several hundred years later, when racist ideas were used to justify the emerging transatlantic slave trade. Now that we have technology to analyse the geographical origins of skeletons found in the UK, forensic anthropologists have been able to confirm that people with African ancestry were living in Britain as early as the 4th century. This means that as historians, when we encounter stories and individuals from history, we cannot simply assume the person is White. It’s a tiny shift in the way that we think, but it’s consequences can be enormous if we accept that Black History has always been part of our history.
Myth 2 – ‘Black history is the history of slavery.’
Reality – Black history is as complex and multifaceted as every other part of history
Between the early 1500s and mid-1800s, it is estimated that about 12.5 million African people were forced into slavery. The transatlantic slave trade devastated the lives of multiple generations and disrupted the political and economic systems of entire continents. Therefore, it is no surprise that historians consider it important to study this seismic historical event. However, if we limit Black history to just slavery, it risks portraying Black people as nothing more than passive victims, it erases Black people’s contributions to science, art and politics, and it implies that Black people’s significance lies only in their suffering, and not in their achievements. In GCSE History, we study Migration from the years 1000-2010, and in that we encounter dozens of Black individuals who enriched British life and society – John Blanke, a trumpeter for Henry VIII who was so valued, he successfully argued for a pay rise that doubled his salary, the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, or Chartist leader William Cuffay who campaigned for housing for the poor. Just like the rest of history, Black history has its dark moments, but there also numerous examples of Black excellence and achievement that we should celebrate.
Myth 3 ‘Black history is studying famous Black individuals
Reality – ‘Ordinary people are an equally important part of Black history’
A typical Black History Month assembly might teach you about some famous Black figures – as Connie just showed, there are so many individuals to choose from. However, Black history is also about the everyday lives of ordinary individuals as well, because they can reveal so much to historians. In Year 8 history last year, we analysed some sources about a Black woman called Cattelena of Almondsbury. Cattelena lived in a house near Bristol in the 1620s, she was single, and she owned a cow, which would have allowed her to sell milk and butter to her neighbours. At a time when most women were expected to be entirely reliant on their husbands, fathers or brothers, Cattelena was a single woman living independently and financially supporting herself. Her story reveals the freedom and independence some women were able to achieve in the 17th century, challenging a lot of our assumptions about women in this time period. At the time, Cattelena wouldn’t have been famous, she wouldn’t have thought she was special as she milked her cow each day, but she changed the way historians understood women’s rights in the 17th century, showing us why the history of ordinary people is so important.