When Charmaine Simpson speaks about Black history, she speaks about something living: knowledge that belongs in classrooms, museums, communities and family conversations throughout the year.
It was this conviction that led her to establish Black History Studies with her husband, Mark Simpson, in March 2007.
“I founded Black History Studies with my husband Mark because we saw a significant gap in the education available on Black history topics that are often missing from school curricula,” she explained in 2024. “Our goal was to address these gaps and provide a more comprehensive understanding of Black history.”
Together, Charmaine and Mark created the organisation they felt their community needed: a place where people could learn about history from an African perspective and encounter subjects rarely explored in formal education.
Under Charmaine’s leadership as Chief Executive Officer, Black History Studies has developed courses, presentations, webinars, film screenings, walking tours, museum visits and community events. These activities bring people together not only to receive information, but to ask questions, challenge inherited assumptions and discuss how history continues to shape contemporary life.
Charmaine summarises the mission through the words of historian Arthur Schomburg: “African history is nothing but the missing pages of world history.”
For her, restoring those pages is not an interest confined to October.
“We believe that it is very important that all history should be taught to everyone and throughout the year, not just in Black History Month,” she says. “Black history is a subject that can be interesting to all.”
Children and young people have remained central to this work. Before establishing Black History Studies, Charmaine worked across the public and voluntary sectors and supported young people through the London Borough of Brent and Crime Concern in Wembley and Harlesden. She later delivered Black history sessions in Britain and in schools in Washington State in the United States.
She also created learning materials connected to The Great and Mighty Wall and developed the Before the Slave Trade resource, helping parents and educators introduce young people to African history beyond the familiar starting point of enslavement.
“Our history did not start with African chattel enslavement,” Charmaine insists. “On our curriculum, history starts at the origin of humanity.”
That principle is important. When Black history is taught only through slavery, colonialism and racism, children are denied the opportunity to learn about African civilisations, scholarship, innovation, political thought and cultural achievement.
Education, however, is not limited to the classroom. Charmaine and Mark also wanted people to encounter history through place. As Director of Black History Study Tours, Charmaine has helped promote cultural tourism to locations of African heritage.
Black History Studies has organised group tours to Egypt and destinations across Europe, alongside visits to institutions such as the British Museum and Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum. Walking tours and study visits transform streets, monuments and museum collections into spaces of learning. They allow participants to stand in the places where history happened and understand that African heritage is present across Britain, Europe and the wider world.
Charmaine has also brought overlooked history into public view. In 2022, she developed content for the Untold Stories History Trail in Gladstone Park, celebrating people of African and Caribbean heritage connected to Brent.
In November 2024, Black History Studies became the first organisation to operate from Islington’s Black Cultural Centre. Its programme of education, community cinema and heritage activities helped create a space where Black voices, culture and knowledge could be shared and celebrated.
Charmaine’s commitment to learning is reflected in her own academic journey. After earning a first-class degree in Economics from the University of Hertfordshire, she continued her studies and, in 2022, graduated with merit from the University of West London’s MA in Global Black Studies, Decolonisation and Social Justice.
Her work as a financial educator and financial-literacy advocate extends the same philosophy into another area of community life. Whether she is teaching history or helping people understand money, her purpose is empowerment through practical knowledge.
Charmaine and Mark’s contribution has received several honours, including the Marcus Garvey Award from Westside Young Leaders Academy in 2022. Yet their greatest achievement can be seen in the community of learners they have built over nearly two decades.
Honouring Charmaine Simpson means recognising a woman who has made education an act of community service. By restoring missing pages, challenging narrow narratives and taking people directly to places of African heritage, she has helped people see history — and themselves — with greater clarity, confidence and pride for generations still to come.