Why do we learn so little about Black British history at school and through the media? In this story, a student interviews her grandmother to learn about the past. From memories of the Bristol Bus Boycott to the toppling of the Colston statue, they discuss key moments and figures in the campaign for racial equality in Britain.
This fictional piece by Grace Chukwurah was originally written as a response to one of the themes of the Writing Human Rights module at the University of Warwick.
“Grandma, I’m here,” I called, peeling off the soaked bag and jacket that clung to me like a second skin.
The muffled creak of the sofa was followed by shuffling footsteps on the carpet.
“Please, grandma, don’t get up,” I said, hurrying into the living room.
I gently cuffed the sleeve of her cardigan, its cashmere wool sliding between my fingers, and guided her to the armchair in the corner of the room, my body supporting hers.
“I’m not as helpless as I look,” she laughed softly as the seat sagged beneath her.
“Grandma, do you remember the school project I told you about last week?”
“Ah yes… the one to study how out of place us old people are in this new world?” she teased, eyes gleaming.
“Something like that,” I chuckled at her uncanny accuracy.
Retrieving my bag from the corridor, and relieved the equipment hadn’t drowned in the rain, I lifted out the tangled wires and the scattered podcast equipment hidden among discarded snack wrappers.
I pinned a microphone to my jumper, strategically concealing a ketchup stain from breakfast, before clipping another to grandma’s cardigan. I moved with deliberate care, wary of how fragile she felt in my hands.
“Ok, are you ready to start?” I asked, perching on the edge of the sofa.
She nodded, her hands resting lightly on her lap. I dried my palms on my tracksuit bottoms before pressing the record button.
“Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Through The Mirror podcast. Today, I’m joined by my beautiful grandma, and we’ll be discussing how life in the UK has changed over the years. Grandma, would you like to introduce yourself?”
Her voice startled me with its boldness. “Hello, I am Barbara, Jenny’s grandmother.”
Leaning closer, her finger hovering over the microphone, “Was that good enough?”, she whispered. I threw my thumbs up, grinning proudly.
“I decided to interview my grandma to gain some insight into what life was like when she was growing up in the 1950s and 60s.”
“Sounds good! So, what is your first question?”
I pulled out the crumpled sheet of interview questions, a canvas of melted ink. With a sigh, I slid it back into my pocket.
“Okay let’s start with this: What was secondary school like in the 1950s?”
A pause settled in the air, heavy and reflective.
“We can start at a later date if you’d like,” I offered gently. “It’s okay if you don’t rememb-.”
“I started secondary school on the 14th of September,1953,” she said firmly, “I remember that day so clearly because I was so miserable. I desperately wanted to attend Streatham and Clapham High School.”
Intrigued, I leaned forward. “What was so special about that school?”
“It was a grammar school, you see, but you had to pass your 11 Plus to be accepted. I had devoted my entire summer to preparing for the test, but it wasn’t enough. My teachers knew I wanted to pass, yet they refused to elevate me into an advanced class.”
“They always saw us as problems to manage, keeping us in the lower sets regardless of our potential. Without their support, I fell just a few marks short. Imagine how much I could have succeeded if they’d believed in me.”
I frowned, struggling for comforting words. “But, Grandma, going to a grammar school doesn’t define your future, though?”
She sighed deeply. “For me, it did. Schools like mine focused on practical training. I dreamed of becoming a doctor, but we spent more hours in domestic science lessons – cooking and sewing, than in actual science.”
“Life back then was less fluid. Every decision you made had a direct impact on your future. You chose a path, and you stuck to it. Education was our only chance to prove our worth, but for many of us, the kind of education that mattered was out of reach. Most of us left school at 15 to financially support our families.”
I hesitated before speaking again. “Why didn’t you talk to your secondary school teachers about your passion?”
She let out a dry laugh. “I would never think that the same teacher, who would strike me every chance she could, would ever have an inkling of interest in what a Black girl like me would want to become.”
“They used to hit you?”
“Oh of course. Every chance they could. They always found a reason to punish the Black students. Talk back? Strike. Incomplete work? Strike. Late to class? Strike. No warning, no second chances – just the sharp sting of the ruler.”
“That’s terrible, grandma. Thank God teachers can’t physically harm us anymore as discipline,” I offered weakly.
Her sharp gaze pierced through me, and instantly my mind flickered to Jordan, a usually quiet student who flipped when an older kid made a racist “joke”. He was expelled and banned from going within 100 feet of school grounds, as if he were some sort of danger.
It seemed a drastic decision. And while Jordan was excluded, the instigator faced no consequences. It didn’t sit right.
“It’s important to remember,” grandma’s voice pulled me back, “that somebody had to stand up so you could sit down. As Douglass said, ‘If there is no struggle, there is no progress’.”
My grandma always spoke in quotes and riddles, her wisdom wrapped in layers of meaning.
“Things are better now,” I replied, though, as I heard them, the words felt empty.
My mind was filling with memories I couldn’t ignore – how searching “How racist is…” before visiting another country had become as routine a part of my travel preparation as packing a suitcase. The trepidation I carried every time I left my community, knowing that I could fall victim to racial violence was an extra baggage I could not check in. And the exhausting constant vigilance, to suppress any action or reaction that could align with the stereotype of “angry Black woman”.
“My dear,” grandma’s voice cut through my thoughts. “You don’t even believe that statement yourself, do you?”
“I mean…” I hesitated. “I know things aren’t perfect and there are still some racists out there, but there’s nothing we can do about them.”
Her unwavering gaze pierced me. “I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”
“Well Grandma, how do I get them to change?”
She leaned forward slightly. “Have you ever heard of the Bristol Bus Boycott?”
“No, tell me about it.”
“It started with a man named Guy Bailey. He applied to be a bus driver for the Omnibus Company. They offered him an interview, of course – his name sounded white enough. But when he arrived, and they saw he was Black, he was told that the vacancy had been filled and they refused to hire any ‘coloured’ people.”
“They were that blatant? They could just refuse to hire you for being a person of colour? In the UK?”
“They could do anything they wanted. Racial discrimination wasn’t illegal back then. Even finding housing was almost impossible with doors plastered with, “No Irish, No blacks, No dogs!”
“Wow.” I shook my head in disbelief. “That’s disgusting.”
“The company claimed that it had to protect jobs for white people, insisting that hiring people of colour would compromise that. Guy Bailey’s mentor, Paul Stephenson, inspired by Dr King’s speeches and the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, decided it was time for a Bristol Bus Boycott.”
“I was 21 when I read about it in the papers. I can still remember the headline: ‘Our policy stays, says bus chief’. The next day, I told my mother I was going to Bristol for the day to join the protest. I didn’t return home for two weeks.”
“Wait – what? You went missing for two weeks in Bristol?” I asked, wide-eyed.
She chuckled softly. “I sent my mother a letter. She understood. Change takes time, and two weeks was nothing compared to the months others dedicated to the cause.”
“Wow! Where did you sleep?”
“Wherever I could,” she replied simply. “Some nights, outside; other nights, on the floors of strangers’ houses – people I met at the protests.”
“The boycott gained national attention. Good people travelled from across the country, leaving their comfortable beds to lie on cold, concrete roads, blocking the buses.”
“Hearing the united voices of strangers, regardless of colour, was the first time in my life that I felt at home in England. As Dr King said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’.
“Every one of us must fight for the rights of others – no matter how far away, no matter if it’s not your own fight. Justice is a fight for everyone.”
Her voice softened as she continued.
“Day after day, we stood on the roads, refusing to give in. After four months of protest, the Omnibus Company finally lifted their racial ban. Two years later, in 1965, Harold Wilson announced the Race Relations Act, the UK’s first step in addressing racial discrimination.”
I stared at her, trying to reconcile the image of the elegant woman before me with the one she had described—sleeping on floors, braving the cold, relentless in her determination. Her frail bones now seemed to belong to someone far removed from the activist she had been.
“Wow, I didn’t know there were civil rights movements in England,” I admitted. “I just assumed England kind of followed what was happening in America and that’s how we got our civil rights.”
Grandma smiled knowingly. “It certainly did help to have that political pressure from America, but we had our own battles here.”
“Grandma,” I said slowly, “do you know what I find the most interesting about all of this? This was supposed to be about how drastically life has changed, but the more you talk about the ‘50s and ‘60s, the more I feel like not much has changed. Racial tensions are still here – they just look different.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, gaze steady.
“Well, take Guy Bailey. He was welcome to the job until they realised he was Black, because of his name. I’ve always felt like my surname is too ethnic, and because of that, people already form attitudes about me. Even when I type my surname on a laptop, it’s underlined in red – like it’s an error that needs correcting.”
“No matter how many times I say my name, people still butcher it, sometimes for their own amusement. I started shortening it to something simpler just to save myself from embarrassment. But it’s even more embarrassing to admit that – it’s like I’m ashamed of who I am.”
The words were tumbling out faster now. “And then there’s the argument that hiring people of colour takes jobs from the white British. That sounds just like what the EDL says now – ‘immigrants are stealing our jobs’. They even used that rhetoric for Brexit.”
“How are we supposed to feel we belong in our own country with messaging like that? And it doesn’t stop there.
“Black students are told we should excel in sports, but rarely get the same encouragement for academic pursuits. Teachers might not be able to hit us any more, but exclusion still disproportionately affects Black students. I even watched a TikTok video yesterday about how Black Caribbean girls are twice as likely to be permanently excluded compared to white British girls. Twice as likely!”
Grandma nodded, her tone approving. “I’m glad you are drawing these connections.”
“I read something online about Covid,” I added, a memory surfacing. “It happened in Bristol, during the Black Lives Matter protests – they tore down a statue.”
I pulled out my phone, quickly typing in the search bar and clicking the first link. “Look. It was a statue of Edward Colston. He was a slave trader and a member of the Royal African Company, which transported around 80,000 people from Africa to the Americas.”
Grandma raised her eyebrows slightly. “Well, I guess we’re both learning new things today.”
“Grandma, why didn’t you ever tell me about any of this?” I asked, the question slipping out before I could stop it.
She looked at me steadily. “These are key parts of recent British history. Instead of asking me why I didn’t tell you, maybe you should ask why you never knew?”
She paused.
“I have always had an uneasy relationship with moments like this. Of course, I feel a great pride with what we achieved, but these memories are from a time when racism shadowed every part of daily life.
“Pride and pain don’t sit far apart in moments like this. That’s why I don’t often share these things unprompted – it means reliving them all over again.”
I swallowed hard. “I understand, Grandma. It’s a shame my school never taught us about it.”
“Well, that’s another ‘mirror reflection’. The British school curriculum still doesn’t teach enough about Black British history. And they didn’t teach us much about Black anything. Every book we read was written by white authors, and Black people were very rarely shown in a positive light.”
My phone buzzed in my lap, the timer blaring. I reached over and muffled its ring.
“Well, Grandma, thank you so much for taking the time to share your story,” I said, taking her hand.
“Even though this was supposed to be about how life has changed, it’s made me realise that racism is as alive as it was in the ‘60s. There’s nothing micro or covert about racism – it’s always there. Look at ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ or the recent rally fronted by Tommy Robinson. Racism disguised as patriotism. It’s the same tactic the Omnibus Company used: protecting the so-called ‘white interests’ at the expense of people of colour.”
“My darling Jenny, the buses may be running now, but the journey is far from over.”
I blinked. “That’s powerful, Grandma. Who said that?”
Her lips curved into a soft smile. “Me.”
All illustrations by Lacuna artist Jiraporn Puengprayotekij
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