News — Black British History

Some of the world’s greatest cultural and historical treasures are housed in London’s British Museum, and a significant number of them were taken during Britain’s centuries-long imperial rule. In recent years, many of the countries missing their cultural heritage have been asking for some of these items back. Benin City in Nigeria is one of those places. They've been calling for the return of the Benin Bronzes, hundreds of artifacts looted in 1897 when British soldiers embarked a punitive expedition to Benin. Many are now housed in the British Museum. And it's just the beginning. As the world reckons with the damage inflicted during Europe’s colonial global takeover, the calls for these items to be returned are getting louder and louder. (Shared via Vox)

Gustavia is the capital and main seaport of the island of Saint Barthélemy, also known as “St. Bart’s.” The Caribbean island is said to have been discovered by explorer Christopher Columbus in 1493, who named it after his brother Bartolomeo. The Taino Indians were the indigenous residents of the island.

The island was first claimed by French colonists in 1648 who arrived with enslaved Africans from the island of St. Kitts. In 1651, the island was sold to the Knights of Malta, an 11th-century Italian religious order. Despite European claims of discovery and ownership, the Taino Indians destroyed both the French and Italian settlements. The Taino placed the heads of their victims on poles lining the beach to warn any further intruders, a tactic that worked for several decades.

French mariners were the next invaders. They successfully settled on the island in 1763. French buccaneers, commonly known as pirates, boosted the economy by trading their plunder of gold from Spanish Galleons for food, liquor, and enslaved Indians and Africans held captive on the island. There was a brief British military takeover of the island in 1758, but it quickly returned to the French until 1784 when they sold it to Sweden in exchange for trading rights in the Swedish port of Gothenburg.

Island traders and local dwellers flourished under Swedish rule. As a free port, one could trade and sell wares and people, purchase supplies for the next voyage, all while avoiding any punishment for otherwise illegal activities. Gustavia first appears in archival records in December 1786, named after the Swedish King Gustav III. The capital city currently takes up about 1.3 square miles of the nine-square-mile island. France repurchased the island in 1878.

Gustavia sits on the Oscar (formerly Gustav Adolf) harbor. Its landmarks include the Gustav Adolf Harbor lighthouse, the Saint Bartholomew Anglican Church, built in 1855, a Royal Swedish Consulate, and numerous shops, boutiques, upscale hotels, and restaurants.

All citizens and residents of Gustavia and Saint Barthélemy as well as the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, regardless of race, were given legal status by the Department of France in 1946. The status meant all island residents are French citizens and French is the official language.

In 2007 Saint Barthélemy became an Overseas Collectivity of France which meant local residents could elect a nineteen-member territorial council. That council in turn elected Bruno Magras as its first president. Gustavia remains the capital of this island of approximately 10,000 permanent residents.

Balladeer and Lyric Baritone Lenny Welch was born Leon Welch on May 15, 1938, in Asbury Park, New Jersey. He was reared by godparents Eva and Robert Richardson and attended Asbury Park High School but left in the 10th grade in 1956. In 1957, when he was 19, Welch he cut the first recordings with Decca, where he began developing a style similar to that of Johnny Mathis. 

In 1962, Welch joined the New Jersey National Guard, at which point he was on duty once per week. Then in the summer, he would go away for two weeks for training for the next six years.  In 1963 while still in the National Guard, Welch recorded on the Cadence label, “Since I Fell for You,” a pop ballad that reached number 3 on U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and #2 on the Adult Contemporary chart in the latter part of 1963. It hit #4 on Billboard’s Hot 100 early in 1964 and by that point had sold over one million copies.  The success of the ballad led to an appearance on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.   Welch followed his hit with “If You See My

Love,” in 1964, which peaked at # 92 on the Billboard Hot 100. “If You See My Love” would be his last record with Cadence Recordings which closed later that year.

Welch landed with Kapp Records shortly after Cadence closed and charted with “Darling Take Me Back” in 1965. The song peaked at 61 and remained on the Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks.  Welch did not record from 1965 to 1968 while he completed his time as a National Guard reservist.  When finally released from military service in 1968 Welch fared poorly with a series of recordings for Kapp Records which did not sell well. He was forced to perform at high school record hops and weekend club dates to promote his new releases on Kapp Records, but nothing significant happened.

In 1969, Welch then took another break from recording and performing to research and practice his music skills and promote a new image.  While often compared to Johnny Mathis in musical style and vocal qualities, Welch was uninterested in performing in Las Vegas or Lake Tahoe. And, of course, his recordings did not sell like those of Mathis.  In 1972 he recorded the single, “To Be Loved/Glory of Love” which was a modest success.  “To Be Loved/Glory of Love” was his last record. In the 1980s Welch sang on T.V. commercials for Subaru, Coca-Cola, M&Ms candy and Oreos Cookies.  Welch obtained his high school diploma in the mid-1980s and graduated from the College of New Rochelle in 1987.

In 1991, Welch joined The Royal All-Stars, a Doo-Wop group, and became interested in theatre. The following year he traveled to California to audition for an acting role \on the ABC-TV soap opera General Hospital. He made it and played the part of a detective in various episodes through the 1990s. 

Lenny Welch has four children with Pamela Beck whom he married in 1983 in Brown County, Texas. They also have six grandchildren.  Welch continues performing at age 83.

The Cuban leader Antonio Maceo Grajales is considered the “most popular leader of the nationalist movement.” Maceo was the son of a Venezuelan mulatto and an Afro-Cuban woman.  He joined the independence movement in 1868. During the thirty year period of the Cuban War, he ascended to the rank of general. The Cuban War for Independence was characterized by leadership efforts which erased racial lines and united all Cubans in the independence movement. In this it is significant that African Cubans as well as whites followed Maceo unconditionally. His public pronouncements made clear that he had no tolerance for racism. Maceo refused to sign “El Pacto de Sanjon” (peace accord to the end the Cuban War for independence and accept Spanish rule) because it did not abolish slavery. However, this pact was signed on February 10, 1878 by the “Committee of the Center,” a group of insurgent leaders along with Spanish General Martinez Campos.

Maceo continued to refuse to participate in any agreement which kept Afro-Cubans in bondage. In his first public statement during the second phase of the Cuban War for Independence, Maceo invited the Cuban slaves to join the insurgency.  In 1879 he made a pronouncement regarding what the real goal of the war was. He stated: “[The war] was one for independence, with which [African Cubans] would achieve the emancipation of the three hundred thousand slaves [then] living in Cuba; [the movement’s] flag [was] the flag of all Cubans and its principles [were] the equality of men.” This statement exemplifies the uncompromising stand that Maceo maintained during his participation in the Cuban War.

Maceo distinguished himself not only as an Afro Cuban abolitionist and civil rights champion, but also as a consummate general.  His most notable exploit, which made him famous among Cubans and feared by the Spaniards, was his horseback march wherein he covered more than 1,000 miles in 92 days and sustained 27 encounters against the Spaniards. Ultimately, Maceo would be pursued, captured, and killed on December 7, 1896.  The man known as the “Titan de Bronze” is remembered by one of the statements that embraces his philosophy: “Aqui no hay negritos ni blanquitos sino cubanos (“Here there are not little Blacks or little Whites, only Cubans”).

The Mangrove Nine Trial was Britain’s most influential Black Power trial.  In Britain, descendants from the Caribbean, Africa, or South Asia, who were mainly immigrants from former British colonies, were considered to be “black.”  The London police and the British Home Office, responsible for immigration, security, and law and order, orchestrated the arrest and trial of nine black leaders in 1970 to discredit London’s growing Black Power movement.

The Mangrove trial focused on the police harassment of the Mangrove restaurant in west London’s Notting Hill area, which was owned by Frank Crichlow, a Trinidad-born community activist.  The restaurant was the heart of the Caribbean community and was also popular with white and black celebrities. Because Crichlow was a Black Power activist, police raided his restaurant twelve times between January 1969 and July 1970, calling the Mangrove a den of drugs, despite not finding any evidence.

In response to this intense police harassment, Crichlow filed a complaint to the Race Relations Board, accusing the police of racial discrimination.  His employee, Darcus Howe, a Trinidad-born Black Power activist, encouraged Critchlow to work with the British Black Panthers (BBP) in London to organize a demonstration against police harassment of the Mangrove.

On August 9, 1970, 150 protesters marched to local police stations and were met by 200 police who initiated the violence that ensued.  Nine protest leaders were arrested and charged with incitement to riot:  Crichlow; Howe, who later became a BBP member; Althea Jones-Lecointe, head of the BBP; Barbara Beese, BBP member; Rupert Boyce; Rhodan Gordon; Anthony Innis; Rothwell Kentish; and Godfrey Millett.

Initially the court dismissed the charges because the statements of twelve officers were ruled to be inadmissible because they equated black radicalism with criminal intent.  However, the Director of Public Prosecutions reinstated the charges and the defendants were rearrested.

The nine defendants used a radical legal strategy in the subsequent trial.  Howe and Jones-Lecointe defended themselves arguing that this was a political trial.  The radical lawyer Ian McDonald represented Beese and coordinated the defense of Howe and Jones-Lecointe with the other defendants’ lawyers.

Howe and McDonald argued for the right to an all-black jury under the Magna Carta’s “jury of peers” clause.  McDonald cited case law allowing Welsh miners to have an all-Welsh jury that led to the practice of selecting juries from the defendant’s neighborhood.  The conservative judge rejected these arguments.  During jury selection, the defense dismissed sixty-three potential jurors, ensuring that there were only two blacks on the twelve-person jury.

During the fifty-five-day trial Jones-Lecointe described police persecution of Notting Hill’s black community.  Howe exposed inconsistencies in police testimony, and a police officer had to leave the courtroom when he was seen signaling to prosecution witnesses as they testified.  Meanwhile, outside the courtroom, the BBP organized pickets and distributed flyers to win popular support. Ultimately the jury acquitted all nine on the charge of rioting.

When Judge Edward Clarke stated that there was evidence of racial hatred on both sides, this was the first time a British court judge acknowledged racial discrimination and wrongdoing by the London police.  The Mangrove Nine gathered broad public support for the fight against police racism in Britain and showed that the fight for racial justice could be won.

The Mangrove Nine Trial was Britain’s most influential Black Power trial.  In Britain, descendants from the Caribbean, Africa, or South Asia, who were mainly immigrants from former British colonies, were considered to be “black.”  The London police and the British Home Office, responsible for immigration, security, and law and order, orchestrated the arrest and trial of nine black leaders in 1970 to discredit London’s growing Black Power movement.

The Mangrove trial focused on the police harassment of the Mangrove restaurant in west London’s Notting Hill area, which was owned by Frank Crichlow, a Trinidad-born community activist.  The restaurant was the heart of the Caribbean community and was also popular with white and black celebrities. Because Crichlow was a Black Power activist, police raided his restaurant twelve times between January 1969 and July 1970, calling the Mangrove a den of drugs, despite not finding any evidence.

In response to this intense police harassment, Crichlow filed a complaint to the Race Relations Board, accusing the police of racial discrimination.  His employee, Darcus Howe, a Trinidad-born Black Power activist, encouraged Critchlow to work with the British Black Panthers (BBP) in London to organize a demonstration against police harassment of the Mangrove.

On August 9, 1970, 150 protesters marched to local police stations and were met by 200 police who initiated the violence that ensued.  Nine protest leaders were arrested and charged with incitement to riot:  Crichlow; Howe, who later became a BBP member; Althea Jones-Lecointe, head of the BBP; Barbara Beese, BBP member; Rupert Boyce; Rhodan Gordon; Anthony Innis; Rothwell Kentish; and Godfrey Millett.

Initially the court dismissed the charges because the statements of twelve officers were ruled to be inadmissible because they equated black radicalism with criminal intent.  However, the Director of Public Prosecutions reinstated the charges and the defendants were rearrested.

The nine defendants used a radical legal strategy in the subsequent trial.  Howe and Jones-Lecointe defended themselves arguing that this was a political trial.  The radical lawyer Ian McDonald represented Beese and coordinated the defense of Howe and Jones-Lecointe with the other defendants’ lawyers.

Howe and McDonald argued for the right to an all-black jury under the Magna Carta’s “jury of peers” clause.  McDonald cited case law allowing Welsh miners to have an all-Welsh jury that led to the practice of selecting juries from the defendant’s neighborhood.  The conservative judge rejected these arguments.  During jury selection, the defense dismissed sixty-three potential jurors, ensuring that there were only two blacks on the twelve-person jury.

During the fifty-five-day trial Jones-Lecointe described police persecution of Notting Hill’s black community.  Howe exposed inconsistencies in police testimony, and a police officer had to leave the courtroom when he was seen signaling to prosecution witnesses as they testified.  Meanwhile, outside the courtroom, the BBP organized pickets and distributed flyers to win popular support. Ultimately the jury acquitted all nine on the charge of rioting.

When Judge Edward Clarke stated that there was evidence of racial hatred on both sides, this was the first time a British court judge acknowledged racial discrimination and wrongdoing by the London police.  The Mangrove Nine gathered broad public support for the fight against police racism in Britain and showed that the fight for racial justice could be won.

George Town, located on the island of Grand Cayman, is the capital city of the Cayman Islands, British West Indies. There has been no archaeological evidence of an indigenous presence in the Cayman Islands before the arrival of the Europeans. The first European sighting of the Cayman Islands was by Christopher Columbus on his fourth and final voyage in 1503. He named the three islands, Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman, “Las Tortugas” after the many tortoises he and his men found there. Subsequent Spanish explorers renamed them the Caymanas, after a species of crocodile inhabiting the island.

The Spanish Crown made no efforts to settle the region, and the islands were not thoroughly explored until 1585, when English sea captain Sir Francis Drake arrived. In 1670, the Treaty of Madrid officially transferred possession of the Cayman Islands to Great Britain, and for nearly three centuries the Islands were administered as a dependency of Jamaica, the largest British colony in the West Indies.

Around 1700, George Town became the first permanent settlement on Grand Cayman. Slavery was introduced in 1734 but enslaved Africans were limited in number comparison to other West Indian colonies that had developed extensive rice and sugar plantations. Today people of African ancestry comprise 20% of the islands’ population. In 1831, the Legislative Assembly that now governs Cayman was established in George Town and granted authority over local issues.

For the next century, the Cayman Islands remained a small, mostly self-sufficient outpost of the British Empire. Most of the local economy depended on sailing and fishing. When Jamaica gained independence in 1962, the Cayman Islands chose to remain a colony of the British Crown, a status they hold today. Also, today, George Town’s economy is dependent on finance and tourism with 600 banking companies located within the small city of 40,200 which holds 61% of the Islands’ 65,542 inhabitants.

The finance sector has made George Town and the Cayman Islands internationally famous. The islands rank six internationally in terms of banking assets and George Town has branches of 40 of the world’s 50 largest banks. The town is also a center for worldwide insurance, accounting, and law firms. Financial services represent 55% of the Cayman Islands’ total economy, 40% of all government revenue, and 36% of all employment. Over 100,000 overseas firms have offices in the Cayman Islands.

Grand Cayman is the largest of the three islands, at approximately 22 miles long and up to eight miles at its widest point. It comprises 76% of the entire territory’s land mass and holds 97% of the islands’ population. There are six districts in the territory, and five districts, Georgetown, Bodden Town, West Bay, East End and North Side located on Grand Cayman.

The population of George Town is one of the most diverse in the world with more than one hundred different nationalities 67% of the population calling the community home. Besides Caymanians, Jamaicans 28% and Filipinos, 14% are the largest groups. George Town is a popular port of call for cruise ships bringing tourists to the beaches as well as to the Jimmy Buffett Margaritaville franchise and the Guy Harvey Art Studio, among other sights.

All Caymanian children are entitled to free primary and secondary education but there are also various churches and private institutions that offer educational services from kindergarten to college level. A fleet of share taxis are the major mode of public transportation in George Town.

The Battle of Isandlwana, January 22, 1879, was the first engagement of the Anglo-Zulu War and would prove to be a significant and unexpected victory for the Zulu in a war which they ultimately lost to the British.

Since the British arrival in South Africa at the beginning of the 19th Century, Zululand had proved a troublesome nation in their efforts to control the region. During the first three decades of the century the British made no attempt to challenge Shaka, the founder of the Zulu Empire, and his immediate successors. From the 1840s through the 1860s however, British (and Boer) power gradually increased as Zulu military control grew weaker. By the 1870s the Zulu Empire threatened British expansion into the diamond and gold-rich interior. In 1878 the British High Commissioner of Southern Africa, Sir Bartle Frere, provoked a war with the Zulu, hoping for a sharp, short attack leading to the destruction of Zulu military power.

On December 11, 1878 Frere sent an ultimatum to Zulu King Cetshwayo, ordering him either to dismantle the military system of his nation or else face war with the British Empire. Cetshwayo had long made efforts to avoid outright war with the British; however he found it impossible to comply with this request and, just as Frere had anticipated, he refused to disband his army and instead prepared for war against the British.

On the 22nd January 1879 the British invaded Zululand. Their army was composed of nearly 1,800 troops, made up of both British and African men from the neighbouring British colony of Natal. Although they faced a force of roughly 20,000 Zulu warriors, the British felt assured of their victory due to superior military resources. However, the battle which ensued would prove to be an embarrassing defeat for the British as they were out-manoeuvred by Cetshwayo’s men. By the end of the battle the British had lost around 1,300 of their force of 1,800 while the Zulus suffered a relatively light loss of around 1,000 men.

The Zulus’ triumph, however, would not last long. In order to preserve the Imperial image of power and prestige and to avoid the Zulu victory inspiring other nations to revolt against British colonial rule, they launched a nine-month counteroffensive that would engage at least 17,000 British troops, the largest Army they sent to Africa. Britain would emerge victorious in this Anglo-Zulu War after their forces captured Cetshwayo on August 28, 1879, forcing him to agree to the dismantling of the Zulu Empire into 13 small states. Eight years later, on May 9, 1887, all of these states were annexed by the British. The Battle of Isandlwana, however, would remain an important landmark in the history of Africa as an example of defiance against European Imperialism.

The 1919 race riots in Great Britain’s seaport areas such as Liverpool, Cardiff, and Salford were stoked by social, economic, and political anxieties and anger by white union workers and demobilized white servicemen against blacks, Arabs, Chinese, and ethnic minority communities and businesses. It was one of Britain’s most violent periods of racial upheaval in the 20th century.

Since the 16th century, the black presence in Liverpool and London had been noticeable but increased dramatically following World War I at a time when the nation entered a period of economic downturn. Labour shortage and shrinking industries in port areas such as Cardiff and Liverpool were widespread. White working-class union workers and former servicemen who lacked the resources to challenge shipping magnates, largely blamed, targeted, and took out their frustrations on blacks and other ethnic minorities who they saw as foreign competitors for jobs and for the attention of white women, thus threatening Britain’s post-war national identity.

The race riots took place between January and August 1919 and were sporadic throughout the year. In Glasgow from January 23 to 30, the British Seafarers Union and the National Sailors’ and Fireman’s Union (NSFU) held anti-immigrant labour meetings blaming foreigners for undercutting white British employment. At one dock in January 1919, black and white seamen, waiting to see if they would be hired, started jostling each other and soon a fight broke out and spilled into the yard. White bystanders joined in, using knives and makeshift weapons to attack black labourers.

Liverpool, well known for its black population, experienced the most “ferocious and sustained” rioting in June 1919. Police arrested dozens of rioters. White rioters lynched Charles Wootton, a young Afro-Caribbean. Liverpool’s rioting crowd reached up to 10,000. Out of fear from their safety, 700 ethnic minorities were temporarily removed from their homes and sought police protection. Black workers were also fired during the riots while black, Arab, and Chinese homes and businesses were damaged or set ablaze by angry white rioters. The government often did not reimburse victims for property damages.

By mid-June, blacks in Salford were also attacked; their properties were also damaged or destroyed. Police intervention in the riots was also slow. However, when blacks retaliated against white rioters, the police intervened and arrested them. At the end of the riots, five people were killed, many were injured, and at least 250 were arrested.

In the aftermath of the June riots, the British government, which had been monitoring black communities, intensified its repatriation scheme. The move to repatriate colonial citizens in Britain was launched in February 1919. However, after the June riots, the government began removing colonial citizens from Britain out of fear of a “black backlash.” The government offered repatriates a resettlement allowance of  £2 to £5, plus an additional £5 dis-embankment allowance. Between 1919 and 1921, an estimated 3,000 black and Arab seamen and their families were removed from Britain under the repatriation scheme. Shipping companies that employed Caribbeans also aided the state by firing black labourers and returning them to the West Indies.

Further rioting also ensued in 1920 and 1921. Sustained racism, post-war economic hardship, and the reclassification of blacks and Arabs as “aliens” with the 1920 and 1925 immigration mandates further made life difficult for blacks, Arabs, and Asians particularly in seaport areas after the 1919 riots.

Inspired by the Black Power movement in the U.S., the Nigerian playwright, Obi Egbuna, founded the British Black Panthers (BBP) in 1968 in London’s Notting Hill.  In Britain, people of Caribbean, African, or South Asian descent, who were mainly immigrants from former British colonies, were considered to be “black.”  The tripling of Britain’s black population from 300,000 to 1 million from 1961 to 1964 led to increased racial and class tensions, especially in London’s Afro-Caribbean community.  These tensions led to more police repression and the creation of the BBP.

While the BBP was not an official chapter of the Black Panthers, it was the first Panther organization outside the United States, adopting the Panther’s symbols of military jackets, berets, and raised fists.  Under Egbuna, BBP fought against police brutality. London police attempted to destroy the new party by arresting Ebguna and two other Panthers on bogus charges of threatening police.  Ebguna was found guilty, and while he was in prison, Althea Jones, a Trinidad-born Ph.D. student at the University of London, became the leader of BBP by 1970.

Althea Jones along with her partner and later husband, Eddie Lecointe, South Asian Farrukh Dhondy, and Neil Kenlock changed the focus of BBP.  The Party began grass-roots organizing of local black communities in England around each community’s issues of racial discrimination in jobs, housing, education, and medical and legal services. The BBP moved their headquarters to Brixton, a poorer black community in London.  Under Jones’s leadership the Panthers became a highly effective community organization that also collaborated on white working class issues and fought British imperialism. Like the Black Panther Party in the U.S., they stressed working-class solidarity in addition to fighting racial discrimination and oppression.

As part of their community work the BBP engaged in legal advocacy for blacks in 10 British cities as well as in London.  The high point of their advocacy work was their defense of the Mangrove restaurant that was the central meeting place for Notting Hill’s Caribbean community.  The police regularly harassed and raided the Mangrove without ever finding any drugs.  The BBP helped organize a demonstration against the police that led to the arrest and charging of nine black leaders with inciting a riot.  These nine included the owner of the Mangrove, Althea Jones-Lecointe, and Darcus Howe.  The Mangrove Nine trial was Britain’s most influential black power trial.  Jones-Lecointe and Howe represented themselves at the trial and demanded an all-black jury as a jury of their peers.  The jury acquitted all nine defendants, and for the first time, a judge publicly acknowledged that there was “evidence of racial hatred” within the London police.

Other BBP achievements included creation of a Youth League and the Freedom News newspaper, and organizing a march of 10,000 people protesting the Immigration Bill of 1971 that reduced black immigration.  In 1973 the BBP split into two factions, and ended soon after.  The BBP had many offshoots, including British Black Women’s Group, Squatter’s Rights Movement, and the Race Today magazine.  The long-neglected BBP has been highlighted in 2017 in a photography exhibit at the Tate Museum, a proposed film on the Mangrove Nine, and airing of Guerrilla, a new drama series loosely based on the BBP.

Lydia Fedorovna Arkhipova was a prolific painter who achieved fame in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and abroad. She also developed her original style which challenged the major trends in Soviet-era art.

Arkhipova’s father was Frederick Bruce Thomas, widely known before the Russian Revolution (1917) in bohemian circles in Russia, Europe, and the United States as a wealthy member of Moscow society because of his ownership of the Maxim Club, a major nightlife venue in pre-1917 Russia. Her mother, Arkhipova Lydia, came from a wealthy merchant family. Thomas had a business relationship with Vasiliy Arkhipov, the father of Arkhipova and introduced him to daughter, Lydia.

When Frederick Bruce Thomas had to flee Russia during the Revolution, Lydia Fedorovna Arkhipova was forced to grow up with her mother. She was quickly recognized as a gifted child. She painted, played the piano, and composed music. In her youth she studied at Moscow State University.

In 1941 mother and daughter left for Central Asia. Two years later in 1943, Lydia Arkhipova at age 29, became a student at the Surikov’s Art Institute, which was moved to Samarkand (Uzbekistan) at that time. There she studied with Director of Arts Sergey Gerasimov and painting professor Alexander Osmyorkin. Her long-term friendship with the artist Robert Falk and her acquaintance with a representative of the Russian avant-garde art, Nadezhda Udaltsova, as well as her love for the impressionists (especially Matisse) and the study of ancient Russian painting had a great influence on her artistic handwriting.

In 1950, after graduating from the art institute, Lydia Arkhipova began to take an active part in exhibitions of young artists across Soviet Russia under the pseudonym “Archi. LF.” In 1953 she became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR. She has traveled around the country but she especially loved to visit Central Asia and small towns where she wrote numerous works that reflected her search for an awareness of her own identity. During this period her painting were noted for their portrayal of festivity and freedom.

By the early 1960s, notes of nonconformism began to play in her work. Her paintings increasingly became modernist in character and were based on idealistic philosophical theories and aesthetic trends of the twentieth century not always favored by the Soviet government or major Soviet artists.

In 1977, Lydia Arkhipova, then 63, gave her first personal exhibition at Moscow’s Hall of the Union of Artists, a belated recognition of her contribution to the world of Soviet Art. After the exhibit she continued to work producing different types of art including portraits, still life, landscapes, architectural sketches and everyday scenes of religious and symbolic subjects. Regardless of the type of art produced, her paintings were always distinguished by decorativeness, bright, hot, sunny colors in a range of red-yellow-orange strokes.

Few Soviet artists were allowed to travel abroad. Lydia Arkhipova, however, over her long career frequently visited India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and traveled to Italy, Spain, France, and North Africa, where was she awarded prestigious art diplomas. Her works today are displayed in many museums of the former USSR as well as in private collections in Western Europe, the United States, and India.

Lydia Arkhipova died in Moscow in 1997. She was 83 at the time of her death.

On Sunday, January 18, 1981, thirteen black youths attending a birthday party in Deptford, South London was killed in an alleged racially-motivated house fire. The New Cross Fire tragedy highlighted hostility between black Britons, the police and the media.

On the night of the fire, nine black youth died. By February 9, four more black teenagers had succumbed to their fire injuries. Before the New Cross Fire, black homes and community centers were targeted and burnt down. Many black Britons believed that the National Front (NF), a fascist group, was responsible for those incidents as well as the New Cross Fire tragedy.

Corroborated eyewitness accounts placed a ‘white man’ in an Austin Princess vehicle at the New Cross Fire scene. Witnesses stated that he threw a Molotov cocktail into the house party. Others believed, however, that the fire started from a dispute between revelers.

After several subsequent failed inquests by The Metropolitan Police, (the Met) black Britons were convinced that the police had failed the black community by not treating the thirteen black youths’ deaths seriously. Frustrated by the police’s inquests, on January 20, black Britons began organizing. ‘An assembly of the people’ consisting of five hundred black Britons was formed to investigate the killings. A week after the fire, 2,000 mourners gathered at the Moonshot Youth Centre in South London to pay their respects and to ‘devout themselves to the struggle for justice.’

It was through the ‘assembly of the people’ that black-Britons discovered that the police was ‘forcing statements’ out of black youths without lawyers or parents being present. Subsequently, the New Cross Massacre Action Group was formed and led by activists, writers, and civil rights campaigners John La Rose and Darcus Howe. They declared March 2, the ‘Black People’s Day of Action’ to demonstrate against the Met’s mishandling of the teenagers’ deaths. On 1 March, the Daily Mail falsely reported that several of the fire survivors were arrested and would face severe charges in what black Britons saw as an attempt to undermine the demonstration and the black community’s inquest into the house fire.

On March 2, an estimated 20,000 demonstrators including members of the Black Panther Party, Black Parents Movement, and Black Youth Movement, marched in one of the most massive demonstrations against racial injustice in British history. For ten hours campaigners marched eight miles from Fordham Park, South London to Hyde Park, Central London with placards stating, ‘Thirteen Dead, Nothing Said’ and ‘No Police Cover-Up.’

Weeks after the demonstration, ‘Swamp 81’, a plainclothes police operation, was launched in Brixton, South London, the heart of the black Briton community. In early April, an estimated 943 peoples were stopped and searched by the police under ‘Sus laws’, an addendum to the 1824 Vagrancy Act, and 188 black youths were arrested. Many black Britons viewed those acts the state’s retaliation for the ‘Black People’s Day of Action’ demonstration. From April to the end of the summer of 1981, several significant uprisings occurred in various British cities.

The New Cross Fire was a significant turning point in Britain in terms of black Britons, the police and the media’s relationship and inter-generational alliance to expose racism, injustices and the plight of black Britons. Today, the New Cross Fire remains unsolved. But, as Darcus Howe said on the 30th anniversary of the fire in 2011 it is ‘the blaze we cannot forget.’