Black Heritage > Liverpool's Early Black Presence

Liverpool's Early Black Presence

There have been people of African descent in Liverpool since at least the 1700s.

Some Africans were sold in the town in the 1760s and 1770s but very few enslaved Africans were brought to Liverpool directly from Africa. A number of merchants brought slaves from the West Indies to work as servants in their homes.

Some African chiefs also sent their sons to be educated here and in the 1790s over 50 were at school in Liverpool.

With the development of the palm oil trade after 1807, African seafarers were increasingly employed to crew the ships. Many of them settled on the outskirts of the town, in the area we know as Liverpool 8.

There are black people in Liverpool, who although well known in their day, have since fallen out of public awareness. But due to their prominent positions in Liverpool black society their stories are once again being told.

One such individual is Pastor Daniels-Ekarte who in the 1930s opened the African Churches Mission that was, for many years, a haven for many members of Liverpool's disadvantaged. The mission was visited by several high profile figures such as the African American activist and singer Paul Robeson, Dr. Hastings Banda, Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah, the first presidents of Malawi, Kenya and Ghana respectively and World boxing champion, Joe Louis (the Brown Bomber).

John Richard Archer who later became Mayor of Battersea in 1913 was the first black man to hold such a position. Archer was born in Blake Street close to Lime Street railway station. There was also a 24-year-old Bermudan named Charles Wootton, who had served in the British Navy but who tragically drowned in the Queen's Dock after being chased and cornered by a mob during the 1919 race riots.

In a more contemporary setting Liverpool is also the birthplace of several well known black actors, musicians and artists, such as Louis Emerick of Brookside fame, Kathy Tyson (Mona Lisa, Band of Gold), Craig Charles (Red Dwarf and radio DJ), Levi Tafari, internationally renowned Rastafarian poet and Joe Ankrah and the Chants, who the Beatles once provided backing to!

To see some individuals from the Liverpool black community, click on Black Liverpool Today.