The UK's oldest Black community, shaped by the docks and built to last in Liverpool 8.
Britain's Oldest Black Community
Liverpool's Black community goes back to at least the 1730s, and it is often described as the oldest and longest established in the UK. Some families can trace their Black heritage in the city back as many as ten generations.
The port made it. Liverpool was a centre of the transatlantic slave trade, and as a port city it also drew sailors, servicemen and settlers from Jamaica, Trinidad, Nigeria, Ghana, the United States and beyond.
1919
During the race riots of 1919, white mobs attacked the Black and mixed-race streets of Toxteth. Charles Wootton, a Black former sailor from Bermuda, drowned. The community stayed and kept building.
Telling The Story
On 23 August 2007, the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, the International Slavery Museum opened at the Albert Dock as part of the Merseyside Maritime Museum. It tells the history of the trade in the city that profited from it.
Liverpool 8
Toxteth, known by its postcode as Liverpool 8, is where the Real Thing grew up. Formed in 1970, with Chris Amoo and later his brother Eddie, they took You to Me Are Everything to number one in the UK charts in 1976, and wanted to call an album Liverpool 8 in honour of their neighbourhood.
On the Granby Four Streets, residents fought off the demolition of the last four streets, set up a community land trust and bought homes on Cairns Street for a pound each. Their work with the collective Assemble won the Turner Prize in 2015.
Black Liverpool Today
Granby Street's market, which started as a small table sale on Cairns Street, now runs on the first Saturday of every month with clothes, art and crafts. Around it, Liverpool 8 remains the heart of the city's Black community, and Black-owned kitchens, salons and brands are part of everyday Liverpool.
Shop Black-owned businesses in Liverpool on CashBlack.
Photo Credits
The Albert Dock, home of the International Slavery Museum. Photo: habiloid, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons Shops on Granby Street, Toxteth. Photo: Rept0n1x, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons