Unearthing Dorset's hidden black history

By trawling the archives Louisa Adjoa Parker discovered Dorset’s connection with the slave trade and its diverse ethnic history

- Louisa Adjoa Parker

When I moved to Dorset in 1992, I had no idea that 12 years later I’d discover the county had a diverse ethnic history. I’d moved from Devon to Lyme Regis, and fell in love with west Dorset’s golden cliffs and rolling landscape. But as a mixed-race woman in a predominantly white area, I felt like an outsider: there was nothing to reflect my heritage, and I experienced constant racism. I hoped things might be better for my daughters, who’d grown-up with local children. But they also experienced racism and struggled to feel they belonged.

Like many, I believed that black British history began during the Windrush era. When as a mature student I studied racism and migration during my Sociology degree, I learnt that Britain had a multicultural history, and I wanted to learn more on a local level. After graduating, I worked with Lyme Regis Museum to research the history of ethnic minorities in the area. I soon discovered that black and Asian people had lived in Dorset for centuries, and a huge part of Dorset’s past had been hidden. There were connections between Dorset and the African slave trade, as well as many other stories waiting to be told. After this, I went on to work on other Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) heritage projects.

When I began this work, the term ‘black history’ wasn’t commonly used. Friends joked that it’d be a ‘really small book’. Others had no idea what I was talking about. Much work has been done in recent years to explore the history of people of colour, very much a part of British history. Yet it has long been ignored, or ‘white-washed’ by historians, writers and mainstream media.