Black Bristolians in Perspective

That Bristol Blacks like Carlton Romaine are at the forefront of the quest for media equality has a deep historic resonance. Blacks and their white allies in Bristol, a major slave port, fought to over turn slavery and assert their freedom. These issues linked tri-continental struggles of Black people in Britain, the plantations of America and the Caribbean, and in Africa, with political change and reform in 19th century Bristol. One hundred and fifty years later, in 1980, Black youth rebelled against the closure of a popular centre in St. Paul's Bristol and became a nation wide symbol of Black resistance.

Bristol's black population are an estimated 4 per cent of the city's 400,00 people, according to available figures. Half of them are concentrated in the wards of Ashley, Easton and Lawrence Hill, where there are high levels of unskilled and unemployed persons. Despite some progress in social equality, Black Bristolians face many unresolved historical and contemporary problems.

Sources: Publications of the Bristol Branch of the Historical Association of the University, Bristol:
C.M.MacInnes, Bristol and the Slave Trade (1968);
Peter Marshall, Bristol and the Abolition of Slavery (1975);
Peter Marshall, The Anti-Slave Trade Movement in Bristol (1968).
See also: Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (London, 1944);
Peter Fryer, Staying Power, The History of Black People in Britain (London, 1984);
and Bristol City Council, Planning and Development Services, 1991 Ward Report.

For more discussion of the prospects and limitations of the Information Society, click the following:

• Info-City Black Britain
• Digital Cities
• Danger
• Widening information gaps and policies of prevention
• The One-dimensional Network Society of Manuel Castells