From Antigua, St Kitts, Nevis and Jamaica to Highfields, and one of the UK's biggest carnivals.
Among The First To Arrive
Leicester's African-Caribbean community was among the earliest groups to arrive in the city from the Commonwealth in the 1950s and 1960s. The textile and engineering industries needed workers, and the first pioneers were soon followed by relatives and friends. Most came from Antigua, St Kitts and Nevis and Jamaica, with families from Barbados, St Vincent and Montserrat here too.
Highfields
After the war, ex-servicemen and workers from the Caribbean settled in Highfields, and it became home to Black Leicester. The neighbourhood has built its institutions around them: the African Caribbean Centre on Maidstone Road, the Highfields Centre, which gave the Windrush generation a place to meet, and Leicester Community Radio at St Peter's Church, which broadcasts hours of programming for the Caribbean community every week.
Organising In Highfields
The community organised to defend itself as well as to celebrate. In 1970 a short-lived Black power group, the Black People's Liberation Army, set up its headquarters on Laurel Road in Highfields, with the aim of ending police brutality against Black residents, and the Leicester Mercury profiled the group that September. Today the city's Story of Leicester project marks the community's history on heritage panels around Highfields, including one outside the African Caribbean Centre telling how the centre began in the 1980s, and in 2020 Highfields Library hosted the exhibition Black Lives Matter Too, curated by Opal22 Arts and Edutainment.
Carnival
Leicester Caribbean Carnival has run every year since 1985, apart from 2006. A week of cultural events builds up to a parade through the city centre and Highfields, which ends in a party on Victoria Park. It is described as the third largest Caribbean carnival in the UK, after Notting Hill and Leeds.
Black Leicester Today
Caribbean families who have been in the city since the 1950s are part of what has made Leicester an ethnically diverse city since the middle of the 20th century. From the Caribbean kitchen at the Melbourne Centre in Highfields to barbers, salons and Black-owned brands across the city, Black business is part of everyday Leicester.
Shop Black-owned businesses in Leicester on CashBlack.
Photo Credits
Spinney Hill Park, Highfields. Photo: Richard Vince, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons Leicester Caribbean Carnival. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0