Black Poppies: Britain's Black Community and the Great War

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We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.

For Black Poppies Bourne received the 2015 Southwark Arts Forum Literature Award at Southwark’s Unicorn Theatre. When Britain entered the First World War on August 4th, 1914 no one could have been more loyal to his king and country than the Guyanese merchant seaman Lionel Turpin. One nearly-unbelievable event in the history of the BWIR, which I was able to work obliquely into my novel, was the story of the ship Verdala, which carried 1,115 black volunteer soldiers from Jamaica (along with 25 white officers) toward England.In 1914 Britain was home to at least 10,000 black Britons, many of African and West Indian heritage. David Olusoga’s latest edition of Black and British has been revised and rewritten especially for secondary school children, and explains and illustrates the much-overlooked history of Black peoples in Britain and beyond.

BWIR regiments were generally barred from actual combat, except in the Middle East, where they could serve in infantry units, and had white officers. With first-hand accounts and original photographs, Black Poppies is the essential guide to the military and civilian wartime experiences of black men and women, from the trenches to the music halls. The red poppy is instantly recognisable as the emblem for Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday commemorations.According to the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), the body which distributes them today, white poppies represent three things: remembrance for all victims of war, commitment to peace and a challenge to the glamorisation of conflict. The Tirailleurs Senegalais, West African Colonial Army troops who fought for the French were composed of soldiers recruited and conscripted from throughout French West Africa and not just from Senegal. Testimonials and first-hand accounts prove that black soldiers fought - and fought well - but the British magazines we hold here, gloss over details of segregation while acknowledgement of individual heroism is hard to find. We have photographs too of the regiment's band, led by the first prominent African-American bandleader, James Reese Europe.