Tweet
BLACK HEROES CELEBRATED IN NEW BOOK
Beaton: in Oxford biography
Norman Beaton and Paul Robeson are among the first modern black historical figures to be included in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography after the book underwent its first revamp since Victorian times.
The dictionary features the biographies of deceased men and women who have helped shape British history from the earliest times to the year 2000.
It includes MP Bernie Grant and there are plans to include the late Val McCalla, founder of The Voice.
The book has been periodically updated since it was first published at the end of the 19th century, but the new 60-volume edition contains the most extensive coverage yet of contributions by black British men and women, as well as those from former British colonies and the Commonwealth.
SPECIALISTS
Previously only 17 black people were listed among the 36,000 entries, compared to several hundred among the 54,000 entries in the new edition.
It is the largest cooperative research project ever undertaken in the humanities and involved 10,000 specialists over 12 years, including British historian Stephen Bourne.
He told The Voice: “Oxford University Press [OUP] did a good job of finding historians who could write entries on black figures this time round.
“They were open to suggestions, so a range of black people are in the dictionary. Mostly they’re people who’ve never been recognised before, but they agreed to include my aunt Esther. She wasn’t famous, just an ordinary working-class seamstress. But it was through her that I came to a better understanding of black British history, which you never read about in books.”
Born in Fulham, London, in 1912, Esther Bruce befriended two famous black people living in London in her lifetime – Marcus Garvey and singer Elizabeth Welsh – but she only qualified for entry because she was the subject of a biography by Bourne.
Commenting on the new edition, OUP 20th century research editor Alex May told The Voice: “At the end of the 19th century few people were interested in black history, but the number of scholars in the field has increased.
“We have also increased coverage of what you might call non-traditional areas, such as music, entertainment and sport, where many black and Asian people excel. The result is far better representation.”
Britains best black newspaper-- The Voice