


Race relations in Britain prior to the Congress

However, whilst acknowledging the grand impact Carmichael’s visit had on the British Black Power movement, this article will ultimately contend that the movement was already well established before Carmichael’s visit. This article will explore how Carmichael’s brand of Black Power expressed in his speech appealed to Black Britons, consequently inspiring many to support the British Black Power movement. A speech he made at the Dialects of Liberation Congress during his time in London is widely regarded as a pivotal moment in the birth of the British Black Power movement, however its role as a catalyst has been largely exaggerated and ignores the preceding developments in Black British history. In July of 1967, Stokely Carmichael, the leader of SNCC and one of the most prominent leaders in the American Black Power Movement, descended upon London as part of an international tour. Students discuss their research findings at a community forum hosted by the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre at Manchester Central Library in December 2019.

Our final blog post on Stokely Carmichael’s July 1967 visit to London is from David Shaw, a recent graduate of the University of Manchester History Department. We would like to extend our thanks to the many archivists and librarians who assisted the students in developing these important profiles in Black British History. These students were part of Kerry Pimblott’s third year seminar on the Black Freedom Movement and were tasked with putting their new historical skills to work by performing original research on the transnational links between movements for racial justice in the US and UK. In the month of October we will be marking Black History Month by sharing a series of short essays written by four recent graduates of the History Department at the University of Manchester.
