Early Africans in Manchester Archive

This archive is made up of photographs donated by the families and friends of Africans in the community in Manchester. Geographically it mainly covers the area of Moss Side although there are photographs from the surrounding areas.

The centre received an initial donation of a set of photographs of Africans in Manchester in the 1940s. They were donated by the adopted son, Leslie, of one of the people featured, named Jide Johnston and his English wife Renee. These wonderful photographs capture one of Manchester’s ethnic communities at a particular time. With Leslie’s permission we turned them into a small portable exhibition which was put up in four local libraries and attracted enormous interest. We also took them to several of the elders groups within the African community, to try to identify the people. We have managed to collect quite a few names and were struck by the power of the photographs as a prompt to reminiscence.

Other photographs in this collection have been donated by Lily Culpeper, Dorothy Skinner and SuAndi. Many individuals in these photographs such as Tiger Freeman and Ekow Frances Quainoo (Frances Q) appear throughout the archive. This collection also includes a transcript of Coca Clarke looking at the photographs and describing her relationship with some of the community members. The accompanying archive Afro Solo, contains outputs from a project to record the experiences of this generation, inspired by Leslie’s donation.

We are actively collecting photographs of this kind and more memories, to ensure that they are not lost as the elders pass away. Unfortunately, the recent passing of several key people: Carol Atta, Ruby Innis, Archie Downie and Lily Culpeper has given an added sense of urgency to this task. It is vital that we make efforts to record the oral history of the African community in Manchester while we still can.

Also included in the archive is an Oral History of Nigerian Immigrants from the 1940s-1960s. HLF project funded project from Afristar foundation. Afristar wanted to document the experiences and personal memories of some of the founders of Manchester's Nigerian community, who arrived between 1940s and 1960s, as these had remained hidden and undocumented.

The project recorded the memories of key individuals, most aged 80 upwards, and collected a variety of personal items relating to their journeys such as photos and immigration documents. An exhibition and documentary film were created and showcased at the Manchester Histories Festival 2016.

Members of the Nigerian community are proud that these early memories are safely lodged in Archives+ at Manchester Central Library. In particular, the project recorded the memories of David Emare, aged 102, who inspired the project and passed away shortly after its culmination.