{"id":29174,"date":"2023-10-04T09:22:08","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T07:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=242223"},"modified":"2023-10-04T10:11:40","modified_gmt":"2023-10-04T08:11:40","slug":"kavita-puris-hidden-histories-britains-first-black-editor-achieved-so-much-in-such-a-short-life","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/kavita-puris-hidden-histories-britains-first-black-editor-achieved-so-much-in-such-a-short-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Kavita Puri\u2019s hidden histories: \u201cBritain\u2019s first black editor achieved so much in such a short life\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kavita Puri explores lesser-known stories from our past. This month she considers the legacy of the man considers Britain’s first black editor <\/p>

By Kavita Puri\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Wednesday, 04 October 2023 at 07:22 AM<\/p>

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When I recently came across the man considered Britain\u2019s first black editor, I was surprised that I had never before heard his name. Samuel Jules Celestine Edwards was born in Dominica, the youngest of 10 children, near the end of the 1850s. In 1870 he travelled to North America and then, some seven years later, to Edinburgh, where he worked as a labourer. He later spent time in Sunderland, where he reconnected with his Christian faith, practising as a Methodist, and became \u2028a vocal proponent of temperance.<\/p>\n

He then moved south to study theology at King\u2019s College London. In a photograph from the university archives dated 1888, he is noticeably the only person of colour pictured among a sea of men in their sombre suits. He stands right at the very back, looking smart and wearing a mortarboard; his head is turned away from the camera, his gaze fixed into the distance.<\/p>\n

\"A\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>
A formal portrait of Samuel Jules Celestine Edwards. His speeches about racial justice had a huge impact in Britain in the early 1890s. (Image by Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

Edwards soon became a celebrated speaker on the lecture circuit, addressing audiences in venues across Victorian England. He also held forth at the spot dubbed \u2018The Forum\u2019 in Victoria Park, east London, which rivalled Speaker\u2019s Corner in Hyde Park as a hotspot for open-air orators. He spoke about racial justice, the ills of imperialism, and abstinence from alcohol.<\/p>\n

Edwards must have been a remarkable man. He helped the formerly enslaved Walter Hawkins write his autobiography, From Slavery to Bishopric<\/em> (1891). He also founded the Christian journal Lux in 1892, and was editor of the Society for the Recognition of the Brotherhood of Man\u2019s newsletter, Fraternity, in 1893. Hence, in Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain<\/em> (1984), Peter Fryer describes Edwards as the first known black editor in Britain. He used his journals to share his political views.<\/p>\n

On 18 February 1893, he wrote in Lux:<\/p>\n

The day is coming when Africans will speak for themselves. The day is breaking, and the despised African, whose only crime \u2028is his colour, will yet give an account of himself. We think it no crime for Africans to look with suspicion upon the European, who has stolen a part of their country, and deluged it with rum and powder, under the cover of civilisation.<\/em><\/p>\n

By 1893, Edwards had been accepted as a medical student, but his health was declining. Rather than slow down, though, he went on a speaking tour during which he visited north-east England. There he encountered the pioneering black American journalist Ida B Wells<\/a>, who had been invited by the Quakers to talk about her campaigns against slavery and lynching. Wells herself had been born enslaved in the US before being freed under the Emancipation Act<\/a> of 1862.<\/p>\n