Despite not often recognised in school textbooks, Black people have been disrupting the status quo for centuries. In this article we take a whistlestop tour around the globe to see how Black men from politics to the arts have used their talent and voice as a vehicle for change. Mainstream history fails to reflect the magnitude of great Black men in history from revolutionaries like Toussaint L'Ouverture to the playwright and poet Langston Hughes. And although we only list five now, it doesn’t end there. We are going to keep shining a light and telling their stories.

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey was a Pan-African, in that he believed that most if not all Black people should return to Africa. Born in Jamaica, in 1887, Garvey formed the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914, alongside his first wife Amy Ashwood Garvey. The UNIA shared Garvey’s Pan-African ideal and had chapters from New York, to Nigeria to Cuba dedicated to the struggle, known as Garveyism.

Although a controversial figure, in particular due to his views on race and racial segregation, he and the UNIA have been a great source of inspiration for many Black activists including Martin Luther King Jr and legendary reggae artist Bob Marley who famously quotes him in Redemption Song - “emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, for though others may free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind”

Fred Hampton

Fred Hampton was a revolutionary socialist who, despite only living 21 years, made a major impact in Black American politics. As the 1969 Chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party, he ensured that the Party worked to stop infighting against major Chicago gangs and worked to eradicate sexism from their movement.

Hampton was later killed by police officers whilst asleep in his apartment and the events that led up to his death were depicted by Daniel Kaluuya, in his Oscar-winning portrayal of Chairman Fred, in Judas And The Black Messiah.

Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah became the first leader of an independent Black African state in 1957. Born in the British Gold Coast, in 1909, he spent much of his time as a young man studying philosophy at Lincoln University and anthropology at the London School of Economics.

It was during these years studying that he developed the view that Black Africa should gain independence from Europeans and by 1949 he had created the Convention People’s Party (CPP) in the Gold Coast, the first mass Black political party in Africa. Despite his arrest by the colonial Gold Coast government in 1950, his party gained popular support and by 1951, upon his release from prison, the CPP was the most popular political party in the Gold Coast. Nkrumah and the CPP played a crucial role in transforming the Gold Coast to independent Ghana in 1957. When Ghana became independent, Nkrumah said in his celebratory speech that ‘we have awakened. We will not sleep anymore. Today, from now on, there is a new African in the world!’

Bernie Grant

While some historians have uncovered the existence of mixed-race Black MPs from earlier eras, one of the first Black MPs in modern Britain was Bernie Grant. Grant, born in British Guiana in 1944, was a well-known activist in Britain who rose to prominence during the 1985 Broadwater Farm riot. In a historical election in 1987, he was elected as Tottenham MP alongside Diane Abbott, who became MP of Hackney and so Britain’s first Black female MP. As an MP, Grant co-founded the African Reparations Movement for reparations for slavery and colonialism and also petitioned for the return of the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. When he died, over 2000 people, including fellow MPs and many of his constituents, attended his funeral.

In 2007, to honour his work for Black communities, Haringey Council opened the Bernie Grant Art Centre and in 2019 the Labour Party established the Bernie Grant Leadership programme for future ethnic minority leaders.

Steve McQueen
While Daniel Kaluuya is the first Black British actor to win an Oscar, Steve McQueen is the first Black British director to win an Oscar. Born in London in 1969, to a Grenadian mom and a Trinidadian dad, McQueen grew up enjoying art and design and eventually won places at Chelsea College of Arts, Goldsmiths and New York University’s famous Tisch School.

Today, he is well known for his productions which detail past and present experiences of the Black diaspora, from people enslaved in American plantations, in the Oscar-winning film 12 Years a Slave, to the British Black Panther movement, in BBC anthology series Small Axe. McQueen is teaming up with the BBC again for an upcoming three-part documentary called Uprising. The series will focus on 3 major events in British history that took place in 1981, including the New Cross Fire.