Searching for Black History in the Leodis Archive

We mark Black History Month 2024 by welcoming back regular guest author Danny Friar, who has unearthed some fascinating examples of Black History in Leeds in a important piece of research… Searching for local Black history can often be challenging. There’s no easy way to do it. I find a snippet here and a snippet…

190 Years Celebrating Emancipation

We welcome back researcher Danny Friar this week, to mark a very important anniversary: 190 years since the emancipation of enslaved people in the British Caribbean colonies. After reading Danny’s article, be sure to catch the Beyond the Bassline: 500 years of Black British Music exhibition currently on display at the Reginald Centre. On the…

I Was Here: Diversity In Medieval Yorkshire

This week we welcome back Danny Friar, one of our most popular guest authors, who offers a sequel to his important previous work looking at hidden, underwritten and marginalised histories in Georgian Yorkshire… It has been around a year since I last contributed as a guest author on the Secret Library Leeds blog so I…

I Was Here: Diversity in Georgian Yorkshire

This week we hear from independent researcher Danny Friar, who offers a brilliant and sensitively-researched excavation of the Georgian era, revealing fragments of a hidden, but universal, history… Ten years ago a discussion of the Georgian period may have brought up names such as Lord Horatio Nelson, Captain James Cook, William Wilberforce and Jane Austen….