Centre for Public History Black History Month Public Lecture: Professor Lucy Bland

Professor Lucy Bland will be giving this Black History Month public lecture on 'The War Babies of Black GIs and White British Women: racism, exclusion and the search; for belonging'

Nearly half of the children born to Black American servicemen and White British women were given up for adoption, but very few were in fact adopted as adoption societies did not want to take the children on their books, thinking them 'too hard to place'. The talk will address some of these children's experiences of growing up in what was then a very white Britain.

Our speaker is Professor Lucy Bland from Anglia Ruskin University, winner of the Social History Society Book Prize for her book Britain's 'Brown Babies'. The stories of children born to black GIs and white women in the Second World War (Manchester: 2019).