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Community | Black America: East End of London

Virtual Tour

Join scholar, Dr. Hannah-Rose Murray, as she gives a virtual tour of Black lives and experiences in London's East End, highlighting sites that have impacted British society.

The virtual tour will focus on the sites where African Americans performed, lectured, and preached outside the city center of London.

Black freedom fighters traveled to the British Isles during the 19th century to educate audiences about the brutalities of slavery, to write and publish their narratives, to raise money to legally purchase themselves or family members, or to settle and work in the area. In their radical and politicized journeys of freedom, they traveled thousands of miles to give lectures in large cities like London and Edinburgh, and to small villages like Bakewell, Keswick and Pembroke.

The reputation of the East End as a violent, lawless, slum-filled place began to emerge in the late 19th century. African Americans visited sites like Stepney, Whitechapel, Mile End, Limehouse, and Three Mills from the 1850s onwards, often speaking to working-class communities. Many of the original sites no longer remain - a mixture of gentrification and bombing damage from WW2 for example - but it's important to recognize the impact Black Americans had on the people in East London, and how the rich, vibrant and exciting history of the East End has always been shaped by Black activists and the antislavery movement as a whole.

Dr. Hannah-Rose Murray is a historian based at Queen Mary, University of London. Her research focuses on Black activism in the transatlantic. Her first book, Advocates of Freedom: African American Transatlantic Abolitionism in the British Isles was published in 2020 by Cambridge University Press, and her accompanying website, www.frederickdouglassinbritain.com attempts to map as many Black activist speaking locations as possible across Britain and Ireland. She has organized numerous community events including talks, school workshops, heritage plaques, performances, podcasts, plays, exhibitions, and walking tours on both sides of the Atlantic.

Registration is required for online access. Registration closes at the start of the program.  

Please contact the Customer Contact Center if in need of assistance accessing the program at 770-978-5154.

* Presented by Adult Services 

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