Black History Month: Leeds United’s first Black footballer

This week we welcome guest author Pete Slater. Pete is one of a small team of volunteers working on a project based on football fandom. He traced the following story during his research using our local newspaper archive, as part of that project work. We publish this piece as part of Black History Month. For…

A Brief History of Leeds #11: The Post-War City, part 2

Part eleven of a series exploring the history of Leeds, using books and other stock resources held in the Leeds Libraries collections. For all the entries in this series, see our dedicated page. In our tenth part we explored collections relating to Leeds United and its important role as a carrier of the Leeds name…

Before Windrush: Black People in Leeds and Bradford, 1708 – 1948

This week the Secret Library blog is delighted to welcome back local historian and researcher Danny Friar whose four articles during Black History Month told the story of Black people in Leeds and Bradford in the three centuries before the arrival of the ‘Windrush Generation’. This week, Danny has very kindly allowed us to publish…

The Black Freedom Struggle in Nineteenth-Century Leeds

On the Secret Library this week we hear from guest author Dr Hannah-Rose Murray from the University of Edinburgh. Hannah-Rose will be discussing her new book entitled African American Narratives and Speeches which will published in 2022. During the nineteenth-century, African American freedom fighters and survivors of U.S. chattel slavery made radical and politicized journeys across…