Inspired Histories

Updates

My latest Black History course...

This year, we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the first Windrush arrivals to the UK. Therefore, together with a host of other activities in Manchester (publicity available soon), I am delivering this course (with financial support from Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Education Trust) focusing on the Windrush generation who (following recruitment by the British government) landed on these shores in June 1948 and went on to help rebuild a war-ravaged Britain.

Furthermore, I intend to invite people who had arrived in the 1950s and early 1960s to talk about their experiences. If you do know anyone who came during this period, please let me know before the course begins.

Course Outline

Week One – Caribbean life before Windrush
Week Two - Rebuilding Britain in the 1950s and 1960s
Week Three – Culture, race and community
Week Four – Legacies of the Windrush generation

Dates

Tuesday 5th, 12th & 19th & Monday 25th June

Your investment

£5.00 per person (ALL FOUR SESSIONS)

Reserve your place

Since the room is limited to 30 people, please make sure you reserve your place as soon as possible.

You can make an email reservation HERE

My book is now available from Amazon (where you can also download a copy)

Dreams of Freedom is a collection of short stories that is set against the backdrop of Jamaican life over more than three hundred years.

The first half of the book is about the indignity of slavery, its human characters and their struggles. The later stories bring us to more recent times - the innocence of childhood and the many faces of love.

The stories are about people: their thoughts, dreams, struggles, resilience, a determination to be free, and to love and be loved.

The author, born into a Jamaica that was steeped in Britain's colonial past, draws upon the nation's long dance with freedom; and weaves a tapestry that brings together Jamaica's history, the struggles of its people, their laughter, sadness and great ability to succeed against all the odds.

Black History in Pictures

A slide show highlighting some positive and some not seen before images of black people from the Ancient Egyptians through to modern times.

African Ways

(A Poem by Linford Sweeney)

European ways are not African ways,

no respect for the intuition of ancient days,

Not this logical, restricted and stagnant flow

instead a spiritual freedom and creative glow

All our history was designed to define us, combine us and refine us.

All their history did was to confine us, consign us and undermine us.

And yet we survived, through all the pain,

and still as strong and dignified people we remain.

The sacred laws of Ma'at - Truth, Justice and Harmony,

Spiritually connected to the divine universal ceremony;

where each enchanting, distant and pulsating star,

was admired, celebrated and worshipped from afar

In unity there was ubuntu: I am because you are

no need for greed, disunity, strife or war;

where African principles stood boldly to witness

daily dances and celebration of togetherness.

There was a great king of Mali, Mansa Musa was his name;

the world's richest man, even today remains the same.

A man of kindness, dignity and great compassion

Who built a great empire and ruled a unified nation,

where there was thirst for knowledge, and Timbuktu

became the great African learning centre to rise anew.

Bless the ancestors, the wise ones, and even the fools,

since upon their backs were written universal rules;

build civilisations that lasted thousands of years.

Today we salute their achievements in joy and tears.

©2015, Linford Sweeney

For more poems like this go to: My Poems