In a 1943 issue of the Royal Anthropological Institute, “SOME ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ANGLO-NEGRO CHILDREN: AN ASPECT OF RACIAL MIXTURE IN BRITAIN”, anthropologist K. L. LITTLE, M.A., Ph.D. (The Duckworth Laboratory, University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge) wrote the following:

“Although fairly large Negro communities have been in existence in Liverpool, Cardiff, London and other ports of the kingdom since the time of the Great War, very little advantage has so far been taken of the opportunities ostensibly available there for the study of racial mixture. The work of Miss R. M. Fleming (1939), who examined a large number of Anglo-Negro and other crosses, mainly in Liverpool, is an exception, but she designed her investigations more from the standpoint of family than of group inheritance. In the present inquiry, which was carried out during a series of visits to Cardiff, Hull and Liverpool in the summer months of 1941, 1942, and 1943, an attempt has been made - so far as the nature of the material allows - to examine certain aspects of mixture on lines more familiar to the anthropologist. The data presented relate to groups rather than to individuals.”

Since Little published this article, much has been written about the Black presence in Britain – books, magazine features, reports, etc. Such scholarship, research, and journalism continues right up to the present moment. Collectively, this is a significant body of material, the trajectory of which is rarely, if ever, reflected on. black-britain.co.uk is an ongoing attempt, a work in progress, aimed at presenting a trajectory of the sorts of material that can be traced back to Little’s 1943 study. The material is divided into the following sections: books, magazine features, newspaper articles, reports.

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