Black History Month: More than a month
SOAS University of London is celebrating Black History Month (BHM) with an exciting programme of events throughout the month of October and beyond.
Now in its 35th year in the UK, BHM remains an important time marked out in the year to celebrate black history and culture. But Black history is history, it is our history, it is a major part of British and world history and deserves our recognition all year round. We are therefore celebrating Black history at SOAS throughout the year, starting with a series of events this October.
In celebration of the 35th anniversary of the first Black History Month in the UK, we will be in conversation with the founder of BHM in the UK, Akyaaba Addai-Sebo on Friday 21 October. Akyaaba will reflect on the history of Black History Month: what it means, and why it remains an important event 35 years on.
Speaking about what Black History Month is and what it signifies Akyaaba said:
“Black History Month is a period of collective self-examination of the State of Black Britain and is also the celebration of the contributions of Africans and people of African descent to world civilisation and especially to the growth and development of the United Kingdom and Europe, from antiquity to the present. Black History Month affirms that Black Lives Matter and that Black Lives Matter because Black History is the History of Humanity. Yes, the History of Our Common Humanity.”
Another key event will be the Heinemann African Writers Series Exhibition Launch on Wednesday 5 October at the SOAS Library. The exhibition of manuscripts and books from the Heinemann African Writers series (HAWS), housed in the SOAS Library and Special Collections, is an outstanding collection of original manuscripts, ready for publication, by leading writers from Africa during the 1970s and 1980s. Many of the authors of the series became world famous and some Literature Nobel Prize winners, such as Chinua Achebe, or leading critics like Ngugi Wa Thiong’o.
The exhibition launch will highlight the difficulty for writers from Africa to publish their books with international publishers, and according to James Currey (one of the leading promoters of the series) the HAWS was pioneering in its time, which tells about the harsh and racist environment of the 70s and 80s for writers from Africa and the African diaspora.
On Wednesday 12 October, we will be in conversation with the V&A Africa Fashion Exhibition Curator, Dr Christine Checinska and V&A East Director Dr Gus Casely-Hayford as part of the V&A’s Africa Fashion Expanded Series. Dr Christine Checinska is the V&A’s inaugural Senior Curator of African and African Diaspora Fashion and Lead Curator of the Africa Fashion exhibition, which is running until April 2023. Dr Casely-Hayford is the inaugural Director of V&A East, appointed in March 2020. He gained a PhD in African History from SOAS and was awarded an Honorary Fellowship in 2016.
The full programme of SOAS events during Black History Month is available:
- 3 October: Book Launch: Between Starshine and Clay, Sarah Ladipo Manyika
- 5 October: Heinemann African Writers Series Exhibition Launch
- 12 October: In Conversation: Africa Fashion Exhibition Curator, Dr Christine Checinska and V&A East Director Dr Gus Casely-Hayford
- 14 October: African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History with Professor Hakim Adi, Professor of the History of Africa and the African Diaspora at the University of Chichester.
- 21 October: 35 Years of BHM: In Conversation with Akyaaba Addai-Sebo
- 29 October: BARAZA: Swahili studies conference 2022
The SOAS Student’s Union is also running a range of events for BHM including talks on colourism, workshops and discussions about indigenous cultures and knowledge and their Pan-Afrikan Congress.
