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Article: Color Them British
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- February 18, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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BLACK LONDON
Life Before Emancipation
By Gretchen Gerzina
Rutgers University Press. 244 pp. 29.95
IT IS commonly assumed that there were no blacks in Britain
until immediately after World War II, when thousands of West Indians
and Africans emigrated to what many thought of as "the mother
country," seeking jobs and better opportunities for themselves and
their children. Black London, Gretchen Gerzina's scholarly but
extremely readable history, is a useful corrective to that
misconception. Meticulously researched and commendably free of
trendy academic theorizing, it depicts the richness of a black
presence in Britain that has been continuous since the 16th century.
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