Exhibition to learn about Mansfield's Windrush generation, migration and black history

‘It Runs Through Us’, the first exhibition of its kind at the museum, opens on Tuesday, February 28, and will remain on display until the middle of November.

It invites residents to learn more about Mansfield’s black history, and the contribution made by the Windrush generation.

It is part of an ongoing project, led by Mansfield Council, to document and collect oral histories from local people of the Windrush generation and their descendants.

Among those local pioneers was Samuel Case, a coal miner, and the first ever black man elected as a Deacon by a 120-strong congregation at Mansfield’s Baptist Church, the highest honour the church can bestow on a person, whose story was first revealed in your Chad last year.

Samuel, who lived on Western Avenue, Mansfield, was among the first wave of Black and Asian people in the 1950s and 1960s to come and seek work in the UK.

After leaving Jamaica in his mid-20s, he worked as a miner at Welbeck Colliery in Meden Vale. His son, Carl Case, who lives in Sheffield, has been working with the museum to create a video to be shown in the exhibition documenting his father's life.

The museum has also delved into the background of a portrait in its collection of Laetitia Hollins, painted by an unknown artist.

Laetitia was the wife of William Hollins whose family ran the mill at Pleasley that produced Viyella, the first branded fabric, from 1890. In the portrait, which is the largest in the museum's collection, she is depicted wearing a black Victorian dress, interpreted as mourning the death of her husband.

Coun Stuart Richardson, council portfolio holder for regeneration and Growth, said: “I am very proud of the part Mansfield played in Britain becoming a multi-cultural nation and how migration and inclusion helped to shape this country for the better and helped to rebuild it after the war.”

Visitors to the exhibition will be able to interact with video screens, visit a House through Time, add memories to a Living Wall and contribute to the Wings of Hope display.