IN DEFENCE OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH IN WANDSWORTH

We, the undersigned, demand that Wandsworth Council reinstates Black History Month (BHM) with its focus on the history of people from the Caribbean and Africa, including their pre-colonial civilizations, the Atlantic slave trade, the two World Wars, the migration to Britain, the struggle for equality and the celebration of achievement. Until and unless this story is central to the curriculum, we need Black History Month. Black history is world history.

We undertake to do everything we can to continue to support BHM every October and reject Wandsworth’s “Diversity Month” which crams all the cultures and heritages of our minority communities into one month instead of covering them throughout the academic year.

We recognise how important BHM is to Black British youth in encouraging their self-knowledge, confidence, aspirations and expectations when battling continuing discrimination in society.

We identify the attack on BHM as an expansion of institutional racism and connect it to the government’s racist deportation of children of the Windrush generation who have lived and worked here throughout their lives.