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Songs of Slavery Booklet Front Cover.png

Songs of Slavery

The Songs of Slavery CD and booklet were produced by a community-based project, led by the Hull and East Riding branch of the Historical Association. The project was part of the Wilberforce 2007 initiative in Hull. Songs of Slavery recorded 19 songs relating to slavery, alongside six short narratives. Most of the songs date from the mid-19th century and were originally composed and sung by enslaved peoples. Some were based on religious beliefs, others also contained coded messages to aid escape and resistance. The Songs of Slavery tracks were sung or narrated by local choirs, singers and musicians, together with students from local schools and colleges.

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Young Runaway Slaves

An exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood in London focused on the experiences of young runaway slaves in Britain. The exhibition focused in particular on the story of Ignatius Sancho, born in 1729 on board a slave ship, who ran away from his owners in Greenwich. Sancho's letters, later published, became an inspiration for those who campaigned for abolition.

2007 Lambeth and the Abolition Booklet Front Cover.pdf

Lambeth and the Abolition

The Lambeth and the Abolition programme included debates, historic trails, a video conferencing discussion between people in Brixton, Ghana and Jamaica, Caribbean family history classes, creative writing workshops, and a dedicated series of events within Black History Month. ‘The Runaways’, an original drama about a runaway slave boy and a kitchen maid in London in 1700, was performed in Lambeth primary schools, accompanied by a workshop. The project researched the local historical links to abolition, and famously the activities of the Clapham Sect (William Wilberforce and his associates) who attended Holy Trinity Church in Clapham. A booklet by historian S. I. Martin sets the history of abolition in the larger context, through his study of the African Academy at Clapham, and his mapping of some of the links between Lambeth, Jamaica and West Africa at the beginning of the 19th century.

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Faces of Freedom: Hammersmith and Fulham and the Slave Trade

The Museum of Fulham Palace is housed in the former palace of the Bishops of London, and former home of Bishop Porteus, the leading advocate for abolition within the Church of England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Faces of Freedom exhibition featured Porteus alongside other individuals associated with slavery and abolition who had links with the area. The abolitionist Granville Sharp lived and is buried nearby, while Crisp Road was named after the slave trader and bead manufacturer Sir Nicholas Crisp. The exhibition included glass beads (very likely produced to be used for barter in Africa) excavated by the Museum of London on the site of Crisp's Hammersmith home. Also featured was the story of Ellen and William Craft, fugitive slaves from Georgia who made Hammersmith their home, and the contributions of local residents Marcus Garvey, Jamaican Pan-Africanist, and nurse Mary Seacole. The exhibition included video footage and posters relating to slavery and freedom, created by pupils from the nearby Phoenix High School.

2007 Remembering Slavery in Hammersmith and Fulham Poster.pdf

Remembering Slavery in Hammersmith and Fulham

Hammersmith and Fulham Urban Studies Centre is a voluntary educational organisation which offers opportunities to children and young people to learn about the local urban environment. The online curriculum resource 'Remembering Slavery' aimed to inform teaching and learning about the transatlantic slave trade by tracing the links of people and places in Hammersmith and Fulham to enslavement, the slave trade and its abolition. It explored the lives of enslaved Africans and their descendants, detailing their experiences and contributions in the local area. The resource aimed to encourage teachers to develop a locally-based Black history focus across curriculum programmes. It consisted of resource guides and animated films across four broad time frames: pre-Victorian, Victorians, Britain in the 1930s and 40s, and Britain since 1948.

2007 Hampstead Museum from Camden Struggle Emancipation Unity booklet.pdf

The Transatlantic Slave Trade: Hampstead Connections

An exhibition at Hampstead Museum (based in Burgh House) which examined the connections between Hampstead and slavery. It looked at how fortunes made in the West Indies funded the purchase of properties in this prosperous area, through men like William Beckford and Robert Milligan. Hampstead was also home to men and women tied to the abolitionist movement, such as Samuel Hoare. William Davy, living in Burgh House, was one of the barristers who acted for runaway slave James Somerset in the case of 1772, presided over by Lord Mansfield.

2007 Enfield ATTST Flyer.pdf

Enfield and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

An exhibition to mark the bicentenary was developed by Enfield Museum Service in partnership with the British Museum and Enfield Racial Equality Council. The exhibition looked at West African culture, the development of the local African community, the links between the transatlantic slave trade and Enfield, wealthy landowners and Quaker abolitionists who lived in the area. Free family days held during school vacations offered traditional Ghanaian story-telling, dancing and drumming, crafts and object handling. Living History Days gave visitors the opportunity to meet actors portraying William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano. School workshops included a drama session and performance about a runaway slave developed from material from Lambeth Archive. The museum service also produced a book, edited by Valerie Munday, which explored further the links between Enfield and the slave trade. The book was sent to all schools in the borough, and formed the basis of a teaching resource aimed at Key Stages 2 and 3. Loan boxes and handling collections provided by the museum service include Ghanaian artefacts and items relating to the slave trade. In 2011, Enfield Racial Equality Council unveiled a plaque to commemorate abolition at the Enfield Civic Centre.

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Slaves and Highlanders

An exhibition developed by Cromarty Courthouse Museum in the Scottish Highlands recording the role of Highland Scots in the slave trade and slave plantations of the Caribbean and South America and, in particular, British Guiana. The striking illustrations were by John McNaught. The exhibition told individual stories of Scottish merchants, plantation owners and their slaves, such as a slave called Inverness, bought, sold, exploited and hunted as a runaway by Scots in Demerara. It also looked at the freed slaves who found a place in Scottish society. Connected to this project was the placing of a plaque in the former Royal Northern Infirmary (now the executive office of the University of the Highlands and Islands). It remains one of the few acknowledgements of the use of profits from the slave plantations to fund charitable public institutions, and the only known one in Gaelic.