Seminar to Celebrate Black History in Medway
The contribution black people have made to the history and development of Medway will be celebrated in a University of Greenwich History Research Seminar on Tuesday, January 30.
The seminar, “Black History In Victorian Medway”, is open to the public free of charge and will be held in the university’s King William Building at its Greenwich campus.
Social historian Brian Joyce will lead the discussions drawing on his research into the varying experiences black people have had in Medway both as residents and visitors.
His talk will span Medway’s black history from itinerant seamen, entertainers, clergy and servants in the late seventeenth century to more permanent black settlement in the 1800s and beyond.
Mr Joyce, a teacher at St Simon Stock School, Maidstone, has been researching the black presence in Medway for more than five years, making use of local newspapers and publications, census enumerators’ returns and parish records.
He is currently involved in a project with Chatham Historic Dockyard looking at the ways black people were employed in the dockyard and the Royal Navy.
His books on the social history of the Medway Towns include The Chatham Scandal (1999), Dumb Show and Noise, and In the Thick of It, co-written with Bruce Aubry.
“This is one of a series of open history research seminars organised by the University of Greenwich to commemorate the bicentenary of the abolition of slavery and looking at new developments in community history,” said Dr Mary Clare Martin, Senior Lecturer in Education Studies, at the University of Greenwich.
The two-hour seminar on Tuesday, January 30, will start at 5pm in Room 003, King William Building, University of Greenwich, Greenwich.
For further information about the “Black History In Victorian Medway” seminar, or other events at the University of Greenwich, which has campuses at Greenwich, Avery Hill and Medway visit www.gre.ac.uk/news/whatson, or e-mail
m.c.h.martin@greenwich.ac.uk
ENDS
For further media information, broadcast, photographic and interview opportunities, please contact:
- University of Greenwich Public Relations, tel: 020 8331 9420
- Delphine Houlton, Andrew Metcalf or Jez Durrant, at Maxim, tel: 01892 513033