Around this time last year, I was asked to write a feature for a national newspaper with millions of readers in print and online, about a figure who has inspired me. It was to mark Black History Month and so naturally the subject would be black. I was being offered a vehicle, a platform, a bully pulpit if you like, to set down in a few hundred words, why one particular person of colour should be applauded not just by me, but by the readership of the newspaper, and by extension society in general.
I chose Roy Hackett, one of the organisers of the Bristol Bus Boycott in 1963, which forced a local company to end its colour bar on black drivers and conductors, paving the way for the first major piece of anti-racist legislation in Britain, the Race Relations Act of 1965.
