The Black Country Society History Day returns to Dudley with a full programme examining the history of protest, dissent and political resistance across the Black Country.
Marking the centenary of the 1926 General Strike, the day brings together historians, researchers and performers to examine the ways people across the region have challenged authority, organised collectively and campaigned for change.
Subjects range from trade unions, women chain makers and suffragettes to nineteenth-century political protest, industrial action and the miners’ strike of 1864.
For Black History Month audiences, one session is particularly significant. Historian Dr Marc Collinson will present Agitation, resistance, and voting: protest in early 1960s Smethwick, examining the political environment surrounding one of the most notorious elections in modern British race relations.
The 1964 Smethwick General Election campaign has become an important episode in Black British history because of the openly racialised politics surrounding immigration and housing during the period.
The history of race and resistance in Smethwick gained international attention only months later when Malcolm X visited the area in February 1965 after local anti-racist campaigners invited him to draw attention to discrimination surrounding housing. Black Country Living Museum has previously worked with partners to commemorate that history.
The wider History Day begins with presentations examining protest represented within the Black Country Living Museum collections before moving through political, industrial and social history.
The programme concludes with Black Country Re-forged and Re-sounded, in which Caroline Price and Stream of Sound explore songs of protest and praise from the West Midlands during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Although the day is not solely a Black History Month event, its examination of the 1960s Smethwick election provides an important opportunity to place local Black history within the wider political and social history of the region.
For anyone interested in Black British history, civil rights, political activism or the changing communities of the West Midlands, this is a fascinating opportunity to understand how national debates around race and immigration played out at a deeply local level.
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