Black and British: A Forgotten History

by David Olusoga

On more than one occasion Douglass suggested that these changes were the result of the infiltration into the country of what he described as ‘American prejudice’. He detected in the mood of Britain in 1859 and 1860 the toxic influence of what he called ‘pro-slavery ministers’. To counter this he included in his lectures appeals for the rejection of these American influences. During a visit to Newcastle upon Tyne in 1860, the city that was home to the Richardson family who had purchased his freedom in 1847, Douglass identified another route by which American racism had seeped into Britain. He complained that ‘Ethiopian minstrels’, who he regarded as a ‘pestiferous nuisance’, had ‘brought here [to Britain] the slang phrases, the contemptuous sneers all originating in the spirit of slavery’. Minstrelsy, Douglass warned, represented black people as being ‘contented and happy as a slave, thoughtless of any higher life than a mere physical one’.73 The increasing popularity of minstrel shows, and the increasingly derogatory nature of blackface performances and routines in British theatres – whether performed by visiting American troupes or home-grown bands – was more likely a symptom of hardening racial attitudes than a cause.