The story of Britain’s Black publishers is one of endurance and monumental creativity in the face of repeated attempts at persecution and denigration.
Luminaries such as the authors and intellectuals C.L.R. James and George Padmore had been educated in some of the Caribbean’s elite colonial schools. There, they were subject to a formal education of respect for English culture and, above all, the monarchy.
Yet as they travelled to Britain in the 1930s, these writers and activists went on to author and publish fervent critiques of the imperial system in which they had been raised. They were followed by scores of students and workers throughout the 1950s – the so-called Windrush generation – like the publishers Eric and Jessica Huntley who, although often subject to that same imperial education, continued in this tradition of anti-colonialism.
