Black History Month: UK Edition

Stephenson was born in Rochford, Essex, in 1937 to a West African father and a British mother. His maternal grandmother Edie Johnson was a well known actress in the 1920s. At age 3 he was evacuated to a care home in Great Dunmow, Essex, where he stayed for seven years. He received his secondary education at Forest Gate Secondary School in London, where he was the only black child in the school. Service in the Royal Air Force followed from 1953 to 1960. Stephenson gained a Diploma in Youth and Community Work from Westhill College of Education, Birmingham, in 1962 and then moved to Bristol to work as a youth officer for Bristol City Council, becoming the city's first black social worker.

Paul Stephenson

Theresa Ione Sanderson CBE (born 14 March 1956) is a British former javelin thrower. She appeared in every Summer Olympics from 1976 to 1996, winning the gold medal in the javelin throw at the 1984 Olympics. She was the second track and field athlete to compete at six Olympics, and the first Black British woman to win an Olympic gold medal.

Tessa Sanderson

Learie Nicholas Constantine, Baron Constantine, Kt, MBE (21 September 1901 – 1 July 1971) was a Trinidadian cricketer, lawyer and politician who served as Trinidad and Tobago's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and became the UK's first black peer. He played 18 Test matches for the West Indies before the Second World War and took the team's first wicket in Test cricket. An advocate against racial discrimination, in later life he was influential in the passing of the 1965 Race Relations Act in Britain. He was knighted in 1962 and made a life peer in 1969.

Learie Constantine

Harold Arundel Moody (8 october 1882 – 24 April 1947) was a Jamaican-born physician who emigrated to the United Kingdom, where he campaigned against racial prejudice and established the League of Coloured Peoples in 1931 with the support of the Quakers.

Dr Harold Moody

Betty Campbell MBE (6 November 1934 – 13 October 2017, born Rachel Elizabeth Johnson) was a Welsh community activist, who was Wales' first black head teacher. Born into a poor household in Butetown, she won a scholarship to the Lady Margaret High School for Girls in Cardiff. Campbell later trained as a teacher, eventually becoming head teacher of Mount Stuart Primary School in Butetown, Cardiff. She put into practice innovative ideas on the education of children and was actively involved in the community.

Betty Campbell