Black Liverpool

'The real thing': West African, West Indian and Afro-American culture at the end of the twentieth century

This book describes the Black community in Liverpool and the arrival, embrace and transformation of waves of transnational Black culture from Africa, the West Indies and the United States in the final three decades of the twentieth century. Transnational cultural influences were spread via the media, brought first-hand by visitors to Liverpool, and through Liverpool residents who travelled internationally.

Liverpool’s Black community was fundamentally different from Black communities in other cities in the 1970s because of the city's unique history. There were far more Africans than West Indians, more long-term citizens than recent immigrants, the highest proportion of inter-racial marriages and people of mixed race in the nation, and a far more vivid collective memory of imperialism in West Africa than in any other city. One important difference is the far greater salience of African cultural patterns, revealed in African family names, the largest concentration of African clubs in the nation, and the emergence of African-inspired organizations like Delado African Drum and Dance company, the Steve Biko Housing Association, and Amadudu women’s refuge.

Black Liverpool closely examines the role of gender ideologies, institutional practices and the experiences of Black women, alongside music and nightlife, social and political ideologies, Black Studies courses, language and dialect, and personal fashion, dress and hairstyles. The religious and secular aspects of Rastafarian beliefs and practices are also foregrounded. Drawing on more than seventy first-hand interviews with Black community residents, workers, activists and celebrities, as well as private and public organizational documents and newspapers, this illuminating book is essential reading for anyone interested in Black culture and the history of Liverpool.

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