HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-08-28T08:01:06.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "A UK museum that tells the long, rich history of migration is long overdue"
items: "There's little understanding of the shared history of Britain and the subcontinent" | South Asian Heritage Month
items: Suing for equality: how Sarah Mae Flemming began the legal fight against segregation
items: Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Samba schools used the carnival to foreground overlooked histories"
items: What is Juneteenth, and why is it celebrated? A historian explains the significance of the holiday today
items: "These women transformed his understanding of the world": making Malcolm X
items: Hakim Adi | “Racism in Britain has a long history – but so does anti-racism”
items: Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Many are turning against prejudice. But we cannot be complacent"
items: Charlotta Bass: the first woman of colour to run for US vice president
items: What was the March on Washington?

Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "A UK museum that tells the long, rich history of migration is long overdue"
type: item
date: 2025-08-28T08:00:15.000Z
creator: Kavita Puri
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Civil rights
subject: Global cities
subject: Historical people
description: Kavita Puri on explorations of the migrant experience
encoded: If you gaze up at the skyline in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, you might spot a new addition. Made from stainless-steel panels and shaped like a rollercoaster, the Tornado sits on top of the city’s newly opened Fenix, a museum that tells the story of human migration. Visitors climb to the distinctive Tornado up a sweeping staircase at the museum’s entrance, along a meandering route that represents the many different journeys people take to reach their destinations. On arriving at the viewing platform, you can take in a panoramic view of the city and its waterways where millions of Europeans once boarded ships in Europe’s largest port, many of them leaving for a new life in the US. Today, Rotterdam is home to more than 170 nationalities. It’s an interesting choice to open a museum to migration at a time when the subject has become so toxic, not least in the Netherlands. Designed by the Chinese firm MAD Architects, the museum displays have exhibits including thousands of suitcases, images of refugees, and a life-sized city bus. Perhaps reasoned discussions about migration can be inspired by art. Read more | "Museums are magical places": Kavita Puri on a new initiative encouraging close encounters with history This is not the first European museum dedicated to migration: they exist in many countries, including Germany, Sweden, Greece, Italy, Poland and France. So it is surprising that the UK does not have a permanent migration museum, only one that has spent years in makeshift venues. After all, millions of people have left Britain over the centuries, not least during the building of its empire, while inward migration – particularly during the postwar years – has shaped our language, culture, cuisine and art. Until recently, you could visit the Migration Museum in its temporary home in Lewisham Shopping Centre, housed in a former H&M store between Foot Locker and TK Maxx. Outside the entrance stood a sculpture entitled Wall, comprising two panels from the Berlin Wall …

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"There's little understanding of the shared history of Britain and the subcontinent" | South Asian Heritage Month
type: item
date: 2025-08-04T08:00:12.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Civil rights
subject: Historical events
subject: Historical people
description: As Britain celebrates South Asian Heritage Month, Shalina Patel, Sumita Mukherjee and Shrabani Basu talk to Matt Elton about how histories of the subcontinent can be better shared and explored
encoded: Matt Elton: What do you see as the value of South Asian Heritage Month? And do you think this kind of specific history month is generally a good thing? Shalina Patel: Black History Month was first marked in the UK in 1987, at a time when there was a huge absence of understanding about black history. Fast forward 30-plus years, and there are groups now advocating for black history 365 days a year. They feel that it shouldn’t be relegated to a specific month, but should be integrated [into conversations] all year. So if we think about the journey, I’d say that South Asian Heritage Month [SAHM, first held in 2020] is really important as a starting point, because there is currently an absence of understanding of the diversity within South Asian culture, communities and history. True, there’s a risk that this is the only time of year when people will talk about this topic, but we’re starting from a place where so few conversations are taking place on a public scale. So marking SAHM is really important now – and I hope that we will get to a point where we won’t need it anymore, because [South Asian stories] will be really integrated into people’s understanding. Sumita Mukherjee: I agree that it’s really important to increase the diversity of history that is being told. SAHM gives us the opportunity to have this conversation – it encourages the media and other forums to showcase stories and histories around South Asia. I would say that there’s an issue, though, with the timing as it stands, because most schools and universities are closed in late July and August, and lots of people are on holiday. Shrabani Basu: I think the important thing is to make it inclusive – it shouldn’t just be South Asians eating curries and watching dances. The point is to make it a national festival that everybody looks forward to. It’s the holiday season, so go for that – make it something that excites people. The danger with all these things is that they lose momentum. To keep it fresh and pop…

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Suing for equality: how Sarah Mae Flemming began the legal fight against segregation
type: item
date: 2025-07-08T08:00:22.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Amazing lives
subject: Civil rights
subject: Historical events
description: The year before the arrest of Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, another black American woman started a legal fight against segregation on public transport. Clive Webb and Tom Adam Davies highlight her role in the civil rights battle
encoded: On 2 November 2005, thousands of mourners crowded into the Greater Grace Temple in Detroit to attend the funeral of black American civil rights icon Rosa Parks. Former US president Bill Clinton led the tributes before a congregation that held hands and sang the protest anthem ‘We Shall Overcome’. The story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama is familiar yet sometimes misunderstood. Her arrest for refusing to surrender a bus seat in December 1955 followed not the spontaneous action of an apolitical seamstress but a calculated decision by a lifelong activist who, along with other members of the black community, had put increasing pressure on white city leaders to end the daily indignities of segregated bus journeys. Her detention may have been the catalyst for the desegregation of public transport in the South, but other black women before her had also braved similar hurt, humiliation and intimidation. Among them was a woman called Sarah Mae Flemming. In June 1954, Flemming was involved in an incident that is far less celebrated than the Montgomery bus boycott. Yet it was an incident that truly laid the foundation for the eventual overturning of Jim Crow laws as applied to public transport. Flemming was a child of the Great Depression, one of seven children raised by a farming couple whose own parents had been enslaved. Born on 28 June 1933, she grew up alongside her siblings in a busy household near Eastover, South Carolina, a small community some 20 miles south-east of the state capital, Columbia. After graduating from high school, Flemming worked briefly for a relative in Ohio before returning to South Carolina to help support her family, taking a position as a maid for white residents in one of Columbia’s affluent suburbs. Read more | Emmett Till: the murder that reshaped the American civil rights movement The day that changed her life, 22 June 1954, started much as any other: she boarded a bus to work. At first there was standing room only, un…

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Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Samba schools used the carnival to foreground overlooked histories"
type: item
date: 2025-06-26T08:00:34.000Z
creator: Kavita Puri
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Civil rights
subject: Slavery
description: Kavita Puri on the important role of carnivals in remembering neglected histories
encoded: I was recently in Rio de Janeiro, in a warehouse on the outskirts of the city, admiring some of the brightly coloured floats that had featured in this year’s world-famous carnival. Each spring, just before the start of Lent, hundreds of thousands of people attend the parades in the city’s Sambadrome stadium and enjoy watching the floats. Like pieces of art many metres high, they are designed and intricately handmade in Rio’s numerous escolas de samba (samba schools), each strongly identified with a local neighbourhood. The schools are organised into leagues for the carnival, during which they compete for the prestigious design award. Pre-Lenten festivities in Brazil began in the early 18th century, during the Portuguese colonial era. The Catholic influence is evident in the name of the event, which is believed to derive from the Latin carnem vale (farewell to meat) or carnem levare (remove meat), referring to the 40-day period of abstinence leading up to Easter. It’s said that the earliest form of the festivities in Brazil evolved from the pre-Lenten Entrudo, celebrated by immigrants from other Portuguese colonies on the Azores, Madeira and Cabo Verde. During that festival, people soaked each other with buckets of water and hurled mud and food, wreaking cheery mayhem that often degenerated into street brawls. Read more | Brazil: a society shaped by slavery In the 19th century, more organised parades attracted elite participants: even the Portuguese emperor joined in the celebrations, together with aristocrats wearing masks and extravagant costumes. Carnival balls were arranged, with music from Europe such as polkas and waltzes becoming popular. By the middle of that century, street parades with horse-drawn floats and military bands had become the focal points. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that samba – the music and dance style most strongly associated with carnival today – was developed by Afro-Brazilians whose ancestors had been transported to South Ameri…

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What is Juneteenth, and why is it celebrated? A historian explains the significance of the holiday today
type: item
date: 2025-06-19T16:14:58.000Z
creator: Professor Adriane Lentz-Smith
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Civil rights
subject: Slavery
description: Each year on 19 June, millions across the US gather to commemorate the day in 1865 when the last enslaved African Americans finally learned of their freedom. Professor Adriane Lentz-Smith explores how the celebrations have evolved over the past 160 years – and the long campaign to have Juneteenth formally recognised as a federal holiday
encoded: Every summer, the Juneteenth holiday offers Americans an opportunity to celebrate visions of black freedom in the United States. ‘Juneteenth’ refers to 19 June 1865 – the day that victorious federal troops read out a General Order to the inhabitants of Texas’s Galveston Island declaring that “all slaves are free” – but enslaved people knew the date was a bit arbitrary. President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had ended slavery in the Confederate states more than two years prior, and the ratification of the 13th amendment six months later would end it throughout the US. Emancipation came to the South not as a dramatic, singular event but, instead, agonisingly slowly over space and time. Yet, for all the news that black Texans had passed to each other about slavery and the Confederacy being on the ropes in the years between the Emancipation Proclamation and the Union victory, slaveholders in the Confederacy’s western frontier held fast to their regime until the Union Army’s arrival made emancipation enforceable. Within weeks, the more than 250,000 black people enslaved across Texas began seizing their freedom. Within a year, they had begun commemorating it. And by 1900, historian Quintard Taylor notes, Juneteenth had become more widely celebrated among black Texans than the Fourth of July. Read more | Abraham Lincoln: the greatest US president? Resistance through celebration The holiday served as part of freedpeople’s self-fashioning. Juneteenth is now a national American holiday, but it began as a Texas Emancipation Day, conceived and institutionalised by the formerly enslaved and their descendants. Black women’s clubs, churches and civic organisations marshalled resources to secure spaces for public celebration. In Houston in 1872, for example, they purchased 10 acres that they named ‘Emancipation Park’ and began holding annual celebrations. Black residents in Austin did the same in the early 1900s. In these cities and elsewhere, African Americans celeb…

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"These women transformed his understanding of the world": making Malcolm X
type: item
date: 2025-06-10T08:00:15.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Civil rights
description: Malcolm X became one of the most influential leaders in the US civil rights movement – thanks largely, explains Ashley D Farmer, to the women who shaped his life and ideas
encoded: On a balmy spring evening in Omaha, Nebraska, Louise Little answered a knock at the door. She must have been terrified when she opened it and saw several knights of the Ku Klux Klan on horseback, demanding that she produce her husband at once. Louise knew she was in trouble. She was all alone save her three children – Wilfred, Hilda, and Philbert – and pregnant with her fourth child, Malcolm. But as the Klansmen brandished their guns, Louise stood her ground. She refused to let them see fear in her eyes or tell them her husband’s whereabouts. In the end, the men left with a threat on their lips as they rode off into the night. Such moments were par for the course for Louise Little, the first of many black women who taught, mentored and shaped the man now known as Malcolm X. Malcolm was born 100 years ago – on 19 May 1925, in Omaha. He was Grenadian-born Louise and Georgia-born Earl Little’s fourth child together. It is easy to see why Earl was smitten with Malcolm’s mother: Louise had travelled extensively, she spoke multiple languages and she was politically engaged. Malcolm’s parents met in Montreal, Canada at a gathering of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). A black nationalist from Jamaica, Garvey captured the black masses with his calls for race pride, and the right for black people all over the world to control their communities and determine their futures. The pair married in 1919, relocated briefly to Philadelphia and then moved to Omaha. By the time Malcolm was born, the Littles were well-known nationalist organisers in the area. Earl was the president of the local chapter of the UNIA, while Louise served as its secretary, managing memberships and writing for the UNIA’s newspaper, The Negro World. Childhood tragedies The couple worked hard to survive during Jim Crow – the state-sponsored racial caste system that deployed disenfranchisement, racial violence and segregation laws to make black people second-class citizens in almost…

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Hakim Adi | “Racism in Britain has a long history – but so does anti-racism”
type: item
date: 2024-11-21T16:24:22.000Z
creator: Hakim Adi
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Civil rights
subject: Historical people
subject: Slavery
description: Many people of African and Caribbean heritage in Britain have suffered racist attacks over the centuries. But, as Hakim Adi explains, they have also been active and effective in organising their own defence
encoded: Racist attacks targeting people of African and Caribbean heritage in the UK have a long history, and have taken many varying forms. They are among the main reasons why, for many centuries, it has been necessary for these people to establish organisations for self-defence, often in concert with supporters and allies among the wider population. African self-organisation became well established in the 18th century. In 1768, Sir John Fielding, a London magistrate, complained that enslaved Africans in Britain not only liberated themselves but then would “enter into Societies and make their business to corrupt and dissatisfy the mind of every black servant that comes to England”. In other words, they encouraged others to liberate themselves. Indeed, Africans were among the initiators of abolitionism – one of the biggest political movements in British history. Read more | Are black histories still being overlooked? The 1780s saw even more overt efforts at political organising by well-known African abolitionists Ottobah Cugoana and Olaudah Equiano. They acted jointly with several other Africans based in London, writing to prominent parliamentarians, abolitionists and the press from 1785 on. In December 1787, Cugoana and Equiano styled themselves Sons of Africa, thereby creating one of the first named African political organisations in Britain’s history – and one of the first Pan-African organisations anywhere in the world. Their letters were signed by as many as 12 different Africans, sometimes specifically “for ourselves and brethren”, suggesting that the signatories represented a much wider community. Through Equiano, the Sons of Africa were connected to other radical political organisations in Britain, including the United Irishmen and the London Corresponding Society. The rise of community activism This tradition continued into the first half of the 19th century, when leading figures included the radical British-Jamaicans Robert Wedderburn and William Davidson, and the …

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Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Many are turning against prejudice. But we cannot be complacent"
type: item
date: 2024-11-21T14:55:29.000Z
creator: Kavita Puri
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Civil rights
description: Kavita Puri explores lesser-known stories from our past. This month she explores how the far-right violence seen across the UK in the summer of 2024 fits in with the history of race riots, and the fight against racism troubling history of racist attacks in Britain
encoded: Far-right violence erupted across Britain following the horrific mass stabbing of children in Southport on 29 July. Attacks in towns and cities were driven by anti-immigrant sentiment, racism and Islamophobia, and fuelled by misinformation on social media about the Southport murderer. As I watched news reports, I heard words being said out loud that many of us had not heard for years. I saw shops vandalised, mosques attacked. And I thought of the people I have interviewed, and the memories that these scenes would have brought back. The generation who came from the colonies (or who were once colonial subjects) invited to Britain after the Second World War to do the hard jobs – the worst shifts in the factories, or in the newly established National Health Service (NHS) – went through so much to be accepted. They began the long and ongoing struggle for equality. Then their children, who were confronted by overt racism and violence, even murder – like that of teenager Gurdip Singh Chaggar, stabbed to death in Southall in 1976 – took to the streets, alongside black Britons and white anti-racists, to defy the National Front. Read more | “London is the place for me”: David Olusoga on the Windrush generation I’m reminded of something one of my interviewees told me after riots that flared in 2001 in Oldham, where the British National Party and National Front were agitating among British south Asian communities. Abdul was a youth worker in Oldham whose family had come from Bangladesh in the 1970s. Back then, his dad had stood up to the National Front, and he himself had faced bitter racism at school in the 1980s. “There’ve been times when we thought: should we up and go?” he told me. “But the question is: where do you go? This is your home. We fought for this country – my forefathers were in the British Merchant Navy during the Second World War. So we’ve got a stake in this country. We don’t just take – we give.” When things flare up he experiences a familiar feeling. “Once a…

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Charlotta Bass: the first woman of colour to run for US vice president
type: item
date: 2024-11-04T11:45:46.000Z
creator: Sonia Grant
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Civil rights
description: Before Kamala Harris, there was Charlotta Bass. Historian Sonia Grant explores the overlooked life of a journalist and civil rights activist who became a target of both the FBI and Ku Klux Klan – and who, in 1952, became the first woman of colour to be nominated to the US vice presidency
encoded: The FBI agent had been sitting in his hot, stuffy car all day, once again tasked with surveilling the nursing home across the street. It was another uneventful day. He noted the comings and goings: deliveries of crates of milk and groceries; the postman making his rounds; nursing staff in their starched uniforms either arriving or leaving; and, towards early evening, a steady stream of relatives visiting elderly residents. When the agent finished his shift, he drove back to the office and typed up what he determined would be his final entry: “July 3, 1967, Charlotta A Bass – Case Closed”. What possible security threat could a bedridden black woman in her nineties pose? Yet despite being incapacitated by a stroke, Charlotta Bass remained a target of FBI surveillance until 1967, two years before her death, and could be arrested on sight if deemed in breach of national security. Her 500-plus page dossier bulged with reports that spanned five decades. It chronicled her denunciations of the Ku Klux Klan; her elevation as the first black American woman to edit and own a newspaper; her championing of civil rights; her political agitation; and, most importantly, her 1952 bid to become vice president of the United States. Who was Charlotta Bass? Charlotta Bass was a journalist and civil rights activist who became a target of both the FBI and Ku Klux Klan – and who, in 1952, became the first woman of colour to be nominated to the US vice presidency. Born Charlotta Amanda Spears in 1874 (or 1880, records differ), she was one of 11 children. Growing up in South Carolina, her family, like all black families, endured discrimination, segregation, prejudicial and, at times, violent treatment, which was sanctioned in law by the Black Codes or so-called Jim Crow laws. In later life, Charlotta would be horrified that it was her home state – long steeped in bigotry and proud of its Confederate past – that had no compunction in sending a 14-year-old black boy named George Stinney to the…

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What was the March on Washington?
type: item
date: 2023-08-28T06:02:00.000Z
creator: Rhiannon Davies
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Civil rights
description: The 1963 March on Washington made history as one of the largest protest marches ever staged, and the setting for Martin Luther King Jr’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. Rhiannon Davies shares an explainer on the events of the day…
encoded: When was the March on Washington? On 28 August 1963, a multi-racial crowd of more than 250,000 protesters flocked to the United States of America's capital, Washington DC, to take part in one of the biggest protest marches ever staged. They were campaigning in the name of jobs and freedom, trying to pressure the president at the time, John F Kennedy, to pass the civil rights legislation that he had long been promising. On the day, protesters gathered at the Washington Monument, before marching about a mile down the National Mall to gather in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. Despite the authorities’ fears that violence might break out, the atmosphere of the day was peaceful. In fact, it has even been described by some as “like a picnic”. What happened at the March on Washington? The day's programme was packed with a full roster of entertainers and inspiring activists. Marchers sung along to musicians like Bob Dylan, prayed with pastors, and at the end of the night listened in awe to the final speaker: Martin Luther King Jr. King was an icon by this time, having first risen to fame during the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, sparked by Rosa Parks' decision not to give up her bus seat. He was one of the boycott's leaders, and his inspiring speeches had captivated the press and roused the nation. But it was during the March on Washington that he delivered his most iconic speech: the “I have a dream” speech. The first half of his speech was as he'd practised. In it, he powerfully explained how he felt black Americans were still not free, a century on from emancipation, and had “come to our nation's capital to cash a check”. He told the eager crowd: “Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.” But then, after delivering his prepared remarks, he went off script. He decided to share with the crowd in front of him his dream for the future of America, …

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