BLAM and BPLS founder Ife Thompson will interview veteran anti-racist activist Leila Hassan Howe
About this Event
We are honored to host a conversation between Leila Hassan Howe - who for decades has been at the front line of the fight against racism in Britain - and BPLS and BLAM founder Ife Thompson.
Leila was instrumental in the takeover of the Institute of Race Relations in 1972, transforming it from an organization aimed at preserving British interests in the Commonwealth to a vehicle for the urgent and radical demands of the 1970's anti-racist movement.
The reformed IRR's magazine Race Today became the organ of the breakaway group the Race Today Collective, formed with British Black Panther Olive Morris. The Collective was based in a squatted building in Brixton, alongside anarchist and gay liberation groups. It hosted consciousness-raising meetings including weekly "Basement Sessions" to discuss art, political theory, and literature. Race Today was an essential witness to the political conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s Britain and centered race, sex, and class in its analysis.
In March 1981, following weeks of campaigning by the Race Today Collective and other Black liberation groups, Leila led a historic 20,000-person march through London - the "National Black People's Day of Action" - that many see as a turning point in Black British identity. The following month, an uprising against police harassment in Brixton saw police lose control of the area for two days.
Ife, a Haldane Executive Committee member, founded Black Protest Legal Support last summer to provide a hub connecting lawyers with protesters during the Black Lives Matter protests. Ife also runs Black Learning Achievement and Mental Health, a charity that campaigns for a decolonized curriculum and provides educational materials on Black history, helps to challenge school exclusions, and offers programs to raise the racial wellness - racial identity and esteem - of children and adults.
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