Draft African Project Unspoken: African Dialogues

D r C h r i s t o p h e r R o y Z e m b e

The overarching aim of the Oral History Archive Project in the East Midlands is to recognise and celebrate the rich diversity of the Black British population in the UK. This emanates from the broader Black British migration story that has the perception of being somewhat eclipsed by the Caribbean immigrants (Windrush, but it’s not the whole story) with Africans at the periphery from a British commonwealth perspective. This was a development that would inadvertently place the African and Caribbean immigrants of post-war Black British history within a skewed and distorted narrative which tends to conflate Africans with Caribbean immigrants. This discourse does not only obscure the complex role of difference between Africans and Caribbeans, but also trivialises the diversity of sub-Saharan Africans who are inclined to be viewed as monolithic communities.

Using the East Midlands as a case study, the project will seek to illustrate why African Diasporas should not be understood as a homogenous community within a diverse British Black population. And why the East Midlands? The focus on the region is an essential part of the decentralisation of the understanding of Black British history that veer on major cities like London, Birmingham and Manchester.

The project’s quest to recognise the diversity of African immigrants in Britain will be enabled by giving the participants a voice to narrate and interpret their memories that would have been developed and nurtured during their integration and interactions with public spaces, through organisations such as churches, community social societies and student unions. In the process, the project will be developing a distinctly African evolutionary project to demonstrate Africans’ settlement in the East Midlands across generations during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The archive will open conversations on what multiculturalism or Blackness means to an African within the evolving British Black immigrant population. Within the British multicultural context, it is an archive that will be accessible to both the public and those interested in African Diaspora research and will be a platform that celebrates and appreciates the diversity within the Black immigrant community in Britain. It will not only create awareness of the diversity of Africans, but also trigger a consciousness on why Black Diaspora communities should forge community social interactions that have continued to coexist with limited social interactions.

As Africans and Caribbeans we need to deal honestly with our historical experiences that have been manipulated by the imperial powers and racist ideologies to divide us, resulting in the existence of community bubbles. To attain such significant deliverables, the project’s outcome will therefore not be restricted to abstract interviews, but also promote the visibility of Africans in the East Midlands with a festival and exhibition focusing on the African continent. The diverse African that will be on display will include music, dance, crafts, cuisine, traditional religions, and entrepreneurship.

This initiative will give value and voice to that unspoken dialogue that has been silent for too long. Unspoken: African Dialogues offers the opportunity for intergenerational, gender and social class perspectives to be shared giving that voice to the unspoken.