Welcome to Leicester’s Black History Season 2007, this year’s theme ‘Souls of Black Folk’ marks the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. Black History Season promotes the history and contribution that the African and Caribbean communities have made to Leicester, helping to understand our present through our past.

The packed programme of events really highlights Leicester’s fantastic diversity, and there’s something to interest everyone, whether you live, work or are visiting the city. To start the season off there will be a launch event at The Y Theatre on Monday 1 October 2007, where you can enjoy a traditional libation, speakers, performers and Caribbean cuisine.

We hope you enjoy this years varied programme of events, find out more here.

Brochures for this years Black History Season are available from Tourist Information Centres, libraries and museums.

Black History Season is an integral part of Leicester’s cultural events, bringing together all the black communities from across the city for a series of events the whole of Leicester can be proud of. The diversity of events in the Black History Season is something of which we can all be proud.

Like all festivals in Leicester, Black History Season is a barometer of the success of the city and the success and hard work of the organisers behind the event. I congratulate all those involved this year and would encourage everyone who enjoys Leicester and the multi-cultural success of the city, to give whatever assistance they can to this and the rest of Leicester’s festivals and events. We look forward to the success of this years programme and to the success of future years.

The Right Worshipful the Lord Mayor of Leicester, Councillor Gary Hunt

It is not taboo to go back and fetch what you have forgotten

Black History Season 2007 marks the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade throughout the British Empire. This is a very significant milestone in the reconstruction of the Afrikan experience during the trans Atlantic slave trade.

Much has been written and said about the process of abolition and emancipation. These writings from a Eurocentric point of view glamorises the European perspective of that history, placating their Christian conscience by extending tender mercies on the poor down trodden slaves who hitherto were burdened with whips and chains, kneeling in supplication begging for freedom. The cold reality is that the captives who were stolen from their homeland wasted no time in rebelling and resisting the evil captors, who were bent on breaking their spirits using all manner of ruthless devices to carry out their purpose.

There is a whole litany of hero and shero kings, queens and noble warriors. Penmen and women wrote tomes, poems, essays, books and other materials opposing the human traffic. Amongst these were Ouladah Equiano and Sojourner Truth, their writings and speeches pressing home the degradation suffered by the captives as can only be expressed by victims.

Black History Season is about redressing the balance and putting forward the Afrikan perspective on the foregoing. As the Afrikan proverb says, ‘until the lions have their own historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter’.

© Wolde Selassie, Chair Black History Season, Leicester