Black Voices On Britain by Hakim Adi is an exceptional book that helps explore the experiences and life of black people throughout the ages in Britain. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about these people and their experiences.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a fresh perspective on history.

Fantastic book that I dipped in and out of and since have bought this book to finish, as I did not manage to finish this in time - but it is in line with my interests, and I have recommended it widely.

I believe that each story in the anthology carries its own weight as you read every single page. It's heart breaking yet so heart-tugging. Definitely would be hard to move on from the heavy theme of this book.

A fascinating and insightful book about a time where very little appears to have been written. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book.

Such an excellent resource from the author of African and Caribbean People in Britain, gathering primary resources from several centuries' worth of Black visitors to and residents of Britain, carefully selected to give their view and vision of the country. A very worthwhile project and a book that should be promoted and read widely.

Selected writings edited and introduced by Professor Hakim Adi

What was it like to be a Black person in Britain in the eighteenth or nineteenth century? A difficult question to answer perhaps, since it was undoubtedly dependent on whether an individual was endlaved or free, rich or poor, male or female, literate or illeterate. It was also dependent on whether someone was born in Britain or arrived as a colonial ‘subject’ from the Caribbean or Africa, or as a fugitive from North America. It may be said that there were as many experiences as there were visitors and residents, and there were certainly thousands of both. Unfortunately, although we know something about the lives of Black people during this period, we know very little about what they thought of their experience of living in Britain. Some were literate, but many others left no record. What we have are merely the published writings of a few men and even fewer women. Professor Hakim Adi draws on a variety of published works in Black Voices on Britain, all of which describe powerful experiences.

James Gronniosaw (1705-1775) Born into royalty in the kingdom of Bornu (today northern Nigeria) he became the first African writer in England after he was published in Bath in 1772. He and his family endured poverty, illness and unemployment in Britain after he was tricked into enslavement, transported to Barbados and then New York, where he was freed after the death of his owner.

Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780) Born on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean and orphaned in infancy, Sancho was the first African playwright, theatre critic, art critic, composer and patron of the arts in Britain. After his parents died, Sancho’s owner took the two-year-old orphan to Britain and gifted him to three Greenwich sisters, where he remained for eighteen years. Unable to bear being a servant to them, he ran away. He was later educated and employed by the Duke of Montagu. During his lifetime he was chiefly known for his letter writing, which commenced during 1766 where he wrote about slavery, colonialism and everyday London life.

Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797) Born in Essaka, Eboe, in the Kingdom of Benin (a village in the southeast part of present-day Nigeria) Equiano was around the age of eleven when he and his sister were left alone to look after the family premises, as was common when adults went out to work. They were both kidnapped, taken far from their hometown, separated and sold to slave traders. He was later taken aboard a European slave ship where he was transported with other enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to Barbados in the British West Indies. He and other slaves were then sent on for sale in the Colony of Virginia. In 1766 Equiano was allowed to buy back his freedom but felt it was too dangerous to remain in the British colonies as a freeman, he was almost kidnapped back into enslavement, so eventually moved on to England. Equiano’s experience in slavery was quite different from that of most slaves; he did not participate in fieldwork, he served his owners personally and went to sea, was taught to read and write, and worked in trading.

Ottobah Cugoano (1757-1791) Born in Agimaque (Ajumako) in the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) He was a Fanti and his family were close to the local chief. At the age of thirteen, Cugoano was seized with a group of children, sold into slavery and transported from Cape Cod on a slave ship to Grenada. He worked on a plantation in Lesser Antilles until he was purchased in 1722 by a Scottish plantation owner, who took him into his household. Late in 1722, he was taken on a visit to England where he learnt to read and write and was able to secure his freedom. In 1773, he was baptised as John Stuart at age sixteen. Cugoano later worked for artists, where he became acquainted with several British political and cultural figures. He joined the Sons of Africa, a group of African abolitionists in Britain.

Boston King (1760-1802) Born in South Carolina, the son of a literate slave taken from Africa. His mother knew of herbal preparations from the Native Americans. After surviving smallpox, King made his way to New York during the American Revolution, twice escaping capture. In New York, he met and married Violet, an enslaved woman from North Carolina who had also joined the British. They had each made their way to New York on the promise of freedom for their contribution to the war effort. The king’s were among three thousand black American slaves who were given certificates of freedom, entered into the Book of Negroes, and evacuated with the British; they were resettled in Nova Scotia. King and his wife immigrated to the new British colony, the Province of Freedom (now Sierra Leone), in 1792. Following the death of his wife, King went to Bristol, England where he was educated as a teacher and missionary. He returned to Sierra Leone in 1796 to teach other settlers and act as a missionary. During that period, he wrote his autobiography, which was published in London.

Mary Prince (1788-1833) Born in Bermuda to a slave family of African descent. When their owner died in 1788, Mary Prince, her mother and siblings were sold as household servants. At the age of twelve, Mary was sold again, her two sisters were also sold to different slave traders that same day. In 1810 Mary Prince was returned to Bermuda when her master moved there with his daughter. While here she was physically abused by her master, and forced to bathe him under threat of further beatings. Mary resisted her master’s abuse on two occasions – once, in defence of his own daughter, whom he also beat. In 1815, Mary was sold a fourth time, to John Adams Wood of Antigua for $300, this is where she attended classes and learned to read. In 1828 Adams Wood and his family travelled to London; at her request, they took Mary Prince with them as a servant. After leaving the household, Prince took shelter with the Moravian church in Hatton Garden. Within a few weeks, she started working occasionally for Thomas Pringle, an abolitionist writer, and Secretary to the Anti-Slavery Society, which offered assistance to black people in need. In December 1829, Pringle hired Prince to work in his own household. Encouraged by Pringle, Prince arranged for her life narrative to be transcribed by Susanna Strickland. Pringle served as editor, and her book was published in 1831 as The History of Mary Prince. The book caused a commotion as it was the first account published in Great Britain of a black slave woman’s life; at a time when anti-slavery agitation was growing, her first-person account touched many people. In the first year, it sold out three printings.

Mary Seacole (1805-1881) Born in Kingston, in the colony of Jamaica as a member of the community of free black people in Jamaica. Mary was the daughter of James Grant, a Scottish Lieutenant in the British Army. Her mother, Mrs Grant, nicknamed “The Doctress”, was a healer who used traditional Caribbean and African herbal medicines. Seacole, a British Jamaican, became a nurse and businesswoman who set up the “British Hotel” behind the lines during the Crimean War. She described the hotel as “a mess table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers”, and provided succour for wounded servicemen on the battlefield, nursing many of them back to health. Coming from a tradition of Jamaican and West African “doctresses”, Seacole displayed “compassion, skills and bravery while nursing soldiers during the Crimean War”, through the use of herbal remedies. Seacole travelled from Navy Bay in Panama to England, initially to deal with her investments in gold-mining businesses. She then attempted to join the second contingent of nurses to the Crimea. She applied to the War Office and other government offices, but arrangements for departure were already underway and she was refused. Seacole finally resolved to travel to Crimea using her own resources and to open the British Hotel. Shortly afterwards, her Caribbean acquaintance, Thomas Day, arrived unexpectedly in London, and the two formed a partnership. After transferring most of her stores to the transport ship Albatross, with the remainder following on the Nonpareil, she set out on the four-day voyage to the British bridgehead into Crimea at Balaclava. Lacking proper building materials, Seacole gathered abandoned metal and wood in her spare moments, with a view to using the debris to build her hotel. The new British Hotel opened in March 1855. The hotel was completed in July at a total cost of £800.

Linda Brent (1813 or 1815 – 1889) Born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina, was an African-American writer whose autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, is now considered an “American classic. After escaping enslavement to the free North, where she was reunited with her children Joseph and Louisa Matilda and her brother John S. Jacobs. She found work as a nanny and got into contact with abolitionists and feminist reformers. In June 1853, Jacobs chanced to read a defence of slavery entitled “The Women of England vs. the Women of America” in an old newspaper. Written by Julia Tyler, wife of former president John Tyler, the text claimed that the household slaves were “well clothed and happy”. Jacobs spent the whole night writing a reply, which she sent to the New York Tribune. Her letter, signed “A Fugitive Slave”, published on June 21, was her first text to be printed. Her biographer comments, “When the letter was printed … an author was born.”In October 1853, she wrote to Amy Post that she had decided to become the author of her own story.

Frederick Douglas (1817 or 1818 – 1895) Born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Talbot County, Maryland, Douglas was of mixed race, which likely included Native American and African on his mother’s side, as well as European. His father was almost certainly white. Douglas was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. He was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counter-example to slaveholders’ arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a good orator has once been a slave – it was in response to this disbelief that Douglas wrote his first autobiography.

William Wells Brown (1814-1884) Born into slavery near Lexington, Kentucky, Brown was of mixed race. His father was White and was his master’s cousin. He formally acknowledged William as his son and asked that he not be sold as a slave, but he and his mother were sold. William was sold several times before he was twenty years old. Brown was a prominent abolitionist lecturer, novelist, playwright and historian in the United States. While working for abolitionist causes in Boston, Massachusetts, he became a prolific writer and also supported causes including temperance, women’s suffrage, pacifism, prison reform and the anti-tobacco movement. His novel Clotel (1853), considered the first novel written by an African American, was published in London, England, where he resided at the time, it was later published in the United States.

Peter Stanford (1858-1909) Born enslaved near Hampton, Virginia. His enslavers orphaned him after selling both of his parents to other plantations before he had turned five years of age. As an orphaned child, he likely lived briefly among the Pamunkey Native American Tribe before the Freedmen’s Bureau sent him to be adopted by a white family in Boston in 1866 who abused him until he escaped as a stowaway on a train to New York. Stanford became an African American religious minister and a writer. Over the course of his life, he became an influential post-bellum anti-slavery activist, writer and philanthropist in America, Canada an£ England.

J. F. Casely Hayford (1866-1930) Born in Cape Coast, in the British Gold Coast colony, now Ghana. His family part of the Fante Anona Clan and descendants of a dynasty of Omanhenes and Okyeames, was part of the Fante coastal elite. His father was educated and ordained as a minister in the Methodist Church and was a prominent figure in Ghanaian politics. His mother was from the 18th Century Irish trader Richard Brew and his African concubine. Also known as Ekra-Agyeman, Hayford was a prominent Fante Gold Coast journalist, editor and politician who supported pan-African nationalism. His 1911 novel Ethiopia Unbound is one of the earliest novels published in English by an African.

Sarah Parker Remond (1826-1894) Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Remond was one of between eight and eleven children of John Remond and Nancy – both of whom were free persons’. They built a successful catering, provisioning and hairdressing business, becoming well-established businesspeople and activists. Remond became an American lecturer, activist and abolitionist campaigner and an international activist for human rights and women’s suffrage. She made her first public speech against the institution of slavery when she was sixteen years old, and delivered abolitionist speeches throughout the northern United States. Eventually becoming an agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society, in 1858 Remond chose to travel to Britain to gather support for the growing abolitionist cause in the United States. While in London, Remond also studied at Bedford College, lecturing during term breaks.

Theodore Thomas or S.J. Celestine Edwards (1857, 1858 or 1859-1894) Born in Dominica, Thomas left his native in 1870, where he worked odd jobs ships for a few years, he spent some time in the United States but later settled down in Scotland where he joined the Primitive Methodist Church. Thomas later moved on to London to study theology at King’s College London. He went on to study medicine at the Royal London Hospital. Thomas became the first person of Caribbean heritage to become a newspaper editor and publisher in Britain. When he travelled as a popular lecturer, his speeches increasingly assumed an anti-racist and anti-imperialist orientation. Thomas / Edwards is the author of Hard Truth which is presented as a debate between Christ and Lucifer. A portion of the book presents the argument that Britain is the birthplace of Anti-African racism. He was a preacher, a tireless anti-racist and an anti-imperialist activist.

John Ocansey (?-1889) Born in the Gold Coast, now known as Ghana, Ocansey was originally a slave in the Ocansey household. He later became the adopted son of William Ocansey, a wealthy import and export merchant. It was reported that John Ocansey was originally of Fulani origin, but there is little known about his early life or date of birth. Ocansey represented his adopted gather at an important legal case in Britain and thereby came to write not only an account of the case and of his father’s trading difficulties, but more importantly the reflections of an African American visiting Britain for the first time. The comparative ‘flexibility’ of African slavery is indicated by the fact that John was adopted by the Ocanseys, employed in the family trading business, and in due course married the daughter, Salome Ocansey.

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a small, relatively tolerated and integrated free community. After completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard University, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. In 1900, he attended the first Pan-African Conference, held in London – he played a leading role in drafting a letter which was addressed to the Nations of the world, asking European leaders to struggle against racism, to grant colonies in Africa and the West Indies the right to self-government and to demand political and other rights for African Americans. Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association of the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) in 1909, he was a Pan-Africanist civil rights activist and a prolific author.

I found this book so interesting and decided to write a short piece about each of the voices – what this book delves deeper into, aside from the general facts, is a detailed and personal experience that transports you to the time and place of each of the people mentioned. The striking differences as well as the striking similarities of today, simultaneously blew me away in each account. The struggles that each person had to endure and what they managed to achieve is remarkable. (especially in the time that they lived in) It was interesting that despite the losses and struggles they had to deal with throughout their lives, mostly, their belief in God appeared to be unwavering. Although hard to read at times, and incredibly sad, I would highly recommend giving this book a read. I like to think I know a fair bit about this type of history in regards to Britain as I find it interesting and read up on things and try to find the real story behind the history that is for instance taught in schools – but I learned so much from this book. I’ll definitely be reading more by this author!

My thanks to the author and MacMillan Collectors Library, an imprint of Pan MacMillan for my advance copy to review via Netgalley.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Four fabulously sad but interesting stars

Black Voices on Britain is an anthology of extracts, letters and articles edited by Hakim Adi, Professor of the History of Africa and the African Diaspora at the University of Chichester. Unlike other books on this subject, Adi brings together the voices of Black people from England, America, Africa and the Caribbean, who share their experiences of Britain from the 18th century to the 20th century. Adi also introduces each individual author with a brief biography, which gives us context about the text that follows.

The extracts are taken from a variety of published works, which include memoirs, fictional pieces of writing, newspaper articles and letters. Through these we get a wonderful insight into Britain from the point of view of a person of colour, during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries.

Black Voices on Britain, was such a fascinating read, the experiences from each author varied depending on their background or the time that they were visiting Britain. I particularly enjoyed the narratives where the authors had a certain expectation of Britain before they arrived and then compared it to the reality. I also liked that many of the extracts were not just centred on London, many of the authors travelled around Britain and shared their experiences of different cities.

The extract that stood out the most for me was Sarah Parker Remond's, Letter to the Editor of the London Daily News, which was written in response to the 1865 Morant Bay rebellion in Jamaica. Remond's letter is a passionate defence of the 'most hated race in the world', which highlights how unjust the world is when it comes to skin colour.

Black Voices on Britain is the perfect read, for anyone wanting to expand their perspective on British history and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

I picked this up because I wanted to read more first-hand historical accounts of the UK from black voices and it delivered!

The accounts range from the 18th-20th century and it's really interesting to read how different cities were experienced and how the authors were received over time. I also liked that each author had a relatively detailed biography to give context to their account and that there were pieces from women as well. I got really excited to read about Mary Seacole - I walk past her house every day on the way to work and I can't believe I've not looked her up sooner! She was a badass!

I think I would have liked a little more historical context perhaps with footnotes or a section at the back but this is only a pocket sized book so I can see why it wasn't included.

I would definitely recommend this book, it has some really valuable and compelling excerpts.

books like this are so easy to read if you study them

They are important and add layer to the truth we THOUGHT we knew

This was a very interesting read. The authors were all visitors to or living in Britain. There are many insights not just into how men and women of colour were treated in Britain but comparisons with the poor white workers and slaves in the US.

There is a good mix of well-known former slaves and those who were not so well-known. I felt the authors who were accepted in Britain were those who were accepted in the higher social classes and those who were not suffered from racism and were in the poorer echelons of society.

This could be useful as an introduction for some history students regarding civil rights world wide.

Hakim Adi has done a wonderful job of compiling texts about Britain by black people. As an American whose education has largely focused on race in America, seeing writing about race in Britain and the way it changed over the years and the different ways it was written about was extremely interesting. The excerpts from "Hard Truth" by Theodore Thomas, the letter to the editor by Sarah Parker Remond, "Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands" by Mary Seacole, and "The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave" by Mary Prince were among the most engaging and interesting texts for me in the collection.

My main criticism of the text is not necessarily one for this collection in particular but rather of the series it is a part of, the Macmillan Collector’s Library. This is the second of the collection I have read, leading me to notice two things: one, the author biographies are limited to one page, and two, there are scarce to zero footnotes. While this format works better for collections of fiction, when it comes to non-fiction the scarcity of context and guidance provided makes an impact on the reading experience.

The bios especially I would have liked to be longer. What we get is well-written and does provide a good basis for reading the following text; however, it is limited to one page, meaning that the writer's biography is limited in scope. While I didn't mind this for the author biographies in the previous Macmillan Collector’s Library collection I read ("Classic Science Fiction Stories"), I would have appreciated more detail and context for the material covered in "Black Voices on Britain" as much of it was non-fiction discussing a time period, place, and people I was unfamiliar with.

While some things I would have liked more context on were easy to look up (such as the Gordon Riots discussed in Ignatius Sancho's letters), other things were more difficult to look up (for example, why there were long dashes in those letters to replace names, what those marked out names are believed to indicate [ex. who lord G---- G---- is], and if the *** marks were used to indicate damage or something else). The latter things are aspects people familiar with the source text or writing conventions of the time might know offhand, while those unfamiliar with the text/historical context would not know offhand and may have difficulty looking up.

Overall, while Adi made excellent choice of texts for this collection, I think that the format restrictions resulting in lack of context in places makes this not the best choice of text for someone who is unfamiliar with British history in the covered era should they want to learn more about black British history. However, a reader already studying or familiar with the historical context may get far more out of this collection, and is more likely to be the target audience for this text anyhow.

I loved this book that made me discover new to me authors and I loved to read their work about Britain in the last centuries.
It's a riveting, interesting, and informative read with some very entertaining pieces.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Most collections on race are focused more on the American experience, so it’s great to read about it from a British perspective. These collections are a great way to discover new writers to explore further

Hakim Adi’s new book contains a selection of writings covering the British experiences recorded by African, Caribbean and African Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. What distinguishes all these excerpts is that they come from published work. Some of the authors are well known - people like Mary Seacole, W. E. B. du Bois and Olaudah Equiano. Most of them are not. Nearly all of them had a political objective and overcame vast obstacles to get their voices heard. The book is an engrossing read.

Sometimes the accounts are really quite funny. Take James Gronniosaw, a member of the royal family of Bornu, who was tricked into slavery, subsequently freed and who arrived in England and married a widowed silk weaver. He tells us about arriving in Portsmouth with great expectations of Great Britain only to find an unexpected vocabulary in use in Portsmouth and then, on top of that, he was robbed by a pub landlady who evidently saw him coming.

Then, there’s John Ocansey, who blows out the gas lighting in his room and survives to tell us about it. He recounts in vivid detail his train journeys.

There is a fascinating piece from Ignatius Sancho, playwright, grocer and letter writer on the Gordon riots.

William Wells Brown who was active in the Underground Railroad after escaping slavery travels extensively and writes about the Crystal Palace exhibition, where, amid much else, he saw a chinaman with braided hair and wooden bottomed shoes. His partner spotted Thomas Carlyle on the bus as they were coming away and Brown puts his finger on exactly what he thinks of him.

A. B. C. Merrimack-Labor wrote ‘Britons Through Negro Spectacles’ at the turn of the nineteenth century and, like quite a few others, pulls no punches. One of those others was Sarah Parker Redmond, whose excoriating letter to the London Daily News after the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica is another highlight.

My favourite, though, is S. J. Celestine Edwards ‘Hard Truth’. Racism originates in Britain says Lucifer to Christ and, in this hard hitting conversation, the devil certainly has all the best lines.

I really enjoyed this book and recommend it wholeheartedly.

I read this after reading Richard Wright’s Black Boy.

It is a great selection of writings from unheard voices. It shows that there were some people out there willing to help and not racist at all whereas others were.

I enjoyed some of the writings more than others. I was quite surprised at the places some of the people visited, places I would have assumed only richer people could afford.

I think this book could make it onto university reading lists.

Many thanks to Netgalley for the ARC

I found this was a book to be savoured. Because of the time in which the selected authors were writing, it was not like a lot of books I have read that splurge verbal gravy with a few meaty morsels of facts but these writers wrote with thought and consideration probably knowing that their words would be judged more harshly than others. Whilst reading, I had a particular focus on the attitudes of the English to people with black and brown skin. I wanted to know if our attitudes were any better than the Americans. If we treated black people with the respect they were due. This book, as far as it could, answered these questions. In addition, they paint a detailed picture of urban and rural English life.

Each exert explains the experiences of people of colour in detail. From their experiences of being insulted on the streets to the charitable acts of individuals. From the heroic fights for justice for a people that were cruelly enslaved to the institutional and deliberate theft of ‘coat and cloak’ as part of colonialism. Through their eyes you gain a glimpse of the way they valued what Europe had achieved and how they wanted to be a part of it but at the same time how much we could have gained in return, if we had listened.

I could gain a lot by reading the book again and I would like to read a similar book of voices in more recent history.