'No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish, the Colour Bar and violent confrontations with Teddy Boys armed with bicycle chains and knives were common in 1960s Britain. They were turbulent times'

Carl Case, aged 63, from Sheffield, took an eight-week trip with his siblings in August, to visit his 90-year-old father Samuel Case, who now lives in Cave Valley in Jamaica – and it revealed something amazing.

“One day I was rummaging through his old photo albums and documents because I had recently been tracing our family history, says Carl, who retired after 25 years as a youth and community worker in Sheffield.

“Among a pile of old papers and photos, we unearthed an original copy of ‘Flamingo’ magazine from 1962, which was widely read as the voice of the 350,000 West Indians, Africans and Asians’ in Britain, between 1961 and 1965”, says Carl.

“As we leafed through the magazine, we were astonished to see a centre-page spread about my father with a full-page photo of dad in his miner’s helmet and pictures of him with me aged three, my late mother Linette and my five-month-old brother Winston.

“I’ve never seen these pictures before in my life and I’d certainly never even heard of this magazine.”

The magazine contained a double-page feature on Samuel’s church work and his election as the first Black man elected as a Deacon by an all-white, 120 strong congregation at Mansfield Baptist Church, the highest honour the church can bestow on a lay person.

“I knew dad had left his home in Jamaica in his mid-twenties,” says Carl, “and that he worked for many years at collieries in Doncaster and Nottinghamshire, and that he’d been badly injured in an underground accident there which had left him with permanent scarring and life-long nerve damage to his head.

“We were living on Western Avenue in Mansfield at the time and Dad was working at Welbeck Colliery.

“He was well known in the community and among the miners because he used to stand up at miners’ rallies and give the prayers before it all started.

“He knew all the miner’s leaders like Arthur Scargill and often stood alongside them at these events.

“People have subsequently told me there was definitely no swearing underground when Dad was around, as everyone knew about his faith, because he didn’t hide it, he shared it with everyone and still does.

“We also knew Dad was something of a hero because during an accident the pit ceiling pillars had crumbled and the roof partially collapsed.

“Dad was practically flattened, with his leg pinned to the ground and he said through the power of prayer, he managed to hold a massive beam from crushing him allowing others to crawl under it to escape and

sustaining severe injuries to his forehead,” describes Carl.

“Helping others to escape and putting others before himself is typical of our dad, says Carl proudly, and he’s still like that today.”

Samuel retired from coal mining in in the early 1980s, before the Miners’ Strike of 1984-85.

Upon returning to Jamaica, he bought a large parcel of land which had once been part of a sugar plantation employing slaves, to set up a farm – and that’s where he still lives today.

“He never told us about the magazine article,” says Carl, “and I was too young to recall the photographer coming into our home to capture snaps of Dad and his family life with my late mother who died at the tender age

of 36.”

Samuel had left his family in Jamaica and was among the first wave of Black and Asian people in the 1950s and 1960s to come and seek work in the UK at the invitation of the British Government in order to help fill

labour shortages caused by World War Two – the Windrush generation.

The Fifties and Sixties were turbulent times for Britain’s growing Black and Asian communities marked by violent confrontations with the racist groups – the ‘colour bar’, where places like shops, pubs and boarding houses often displayed signs with ‘No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’, was common.

“All this was shockingly new to my dad,” says Carl, “but I am so proud of him, because he blazed a trail for Black people in the UK in the 1960s at a time when prejudice and blatant discrimination was common, and he

met it with kindness and genuine compassion for people.

“But he told me adamantly, that once he got into the colliery lift shaft to start his shift down the pit, there was no racism at all because they were all a ‘band of brothers.

“Everyone depended on each other for their own safety, and everybody was equal and were treated equally, with no distinctions made."

The1962 Flamingo article goes on to quote Samuel as saying: “I am highly honoured to serve as a Deacon. I have never found any evidence of a colour bar here and the people trust me. I hope that in a small way I

can promote friendship between all races.”

The article continues with a quote from the Reverend Arthur Neave, minister of Rosemary Street Baptist Church at the time stating: “This is the answer to the colour bar. Mr Case has done so much for the church and has brought other coloured people along.”

Surprised

Carl says: “I was pleasantly surprised with the popularity of the Black British press at this time, and gobsmacked when I found the editor of this monthly magazine was Edward Scobie.

“A few years later, Edward went on to write the seminal book Black Britannia, documenting the Black presence in the UK from the 1600s and continually up to the 20th century.

“Who would have believed that there’d be a direct link between Edward Scobie and my dad?”

After returning to Jamaica, Samuel went on again to become a Deacon and church leader at the Clarksonville Baptist Church in Saint Ann, where he also became Church treasurer.

Carl says: “Each November, he’d ring around all his relatives and friends in the UK, the USA and Canada to raise funds for Christmas food parcels for the elderly and the needy in Jamaica. He’s just made that way.

“I’m so glad we found this article because it reinforces what a hero, role-model and ground-breaker he is in so many ways, demonstrating what it is to be a good father and a good man.

“When our mum died, I was the eldest, close to seven, and he was left with three young boys to bring up on his own, which can’t have been easy and really is a big challenge for any man at any time.

“When I began researching our family history and the wider history of the African slave trade, and its connection to Jamaica and the eventual emancipation and abolition of slavery, I realised that at times history is

much closer to our doorsteps than we think.

“The everyday struggles and achievements of the Windrush generation like my dad, who made it to this country, worked hard, made a life and brought up families, need to be celebrated because it’s upon their

shoulders that we all stand.”

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