Guest Blog Post by Holly Cooper, History DPhil student at the University of Oxford
On Saturday 9th of March, the Coventry Caribbean Community History Project (or, CCCHP) were invited to take a tour through the DMU Special Collections archive as well as the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre (SLRC) exhibition. The CCCHP was launched in January 2024 by a Coventry-based community group, the ArawaK Community Trust (ACT). The aim of the project is to provide research and curation skills to young Black people in Coventry, enabling them to contribute to the creation of a live community-based exhibition. The project engages directly with contemporary historical recovery praxis, to assemble a history by us, for us. The CCCHP facilitator is one of the ACT coordinators, Holly Cooper, who is a History DPhil student at the University of Oxford, who’s thesis directly aligns with the aim of the project.
Part of the programme is dedicated to archival training, ensuring our researchers are confident and able to address the archives, as well as being aware of their potentials and limitations. To do this, we were lucky enough to spend the morning with the wonderful Katharine Short, who is the Archives Manager at DMU. We began by viewing the SLRC’s permanent exhibition on the life of Stephen Lawrence, the case surrounding his murder, and what came as a result of this tragedy. It is an incredibly heartfelt, emotional, but inspiring exhibition that beautifully illustrates the four key themes of the Centre. As a project, we are inspired by this work and endeavour to embed these practices in our own work.
From this, our group had the opportunity to learn more about the work of the Special Collections Archive, which led to discussions around the ethics of collecting, managing, and approaching Black community archives, the handling of ‘problematic’ materials in a productive and meaningful way, and the actual assembly of archives that contain the stories of historically marginalised groups. As a group, we were also presented with some materials that relate to this work, and each student was tasked to pick one item and write a short primary source analysis around it.
We want to share our findings with the wider community, and so we have constructed a short series of blog posts, hosted by the ArawaK Community Trust, St Mary’s Guildhall, and the DMU Special Collections platforms. Each blog post is dedicated to a different CCCHP 23/24 researcher, so make sure to check out each one!
In this post, we will be sharing Iqra Abdi’s analysis of a photo album from a trip to Tanzania in 1981 (ref. DF/D/01/B/196).
'This object is a photo album, filled with pictures from a trip two Leicester-based nurses (Miss P Goodall and Miss Escott) took to the Haruma Convent in Moshi, Tanzania. The aim of their trip was to help train nurses to be ‘better’ healthcare providers by reorganising their training syllabus. The trip was 21 days long, from 19th February to 12th March 1981.
The photo album is large and meticulously well preserved. The pictures are of good quality. It includes pictures of the women at the convent, animals, plants and landscapes. At the back of the photo album, there is a detailed itinerary and report. I found this photo album particularly interesting as it demonstrates how race impacts the archives in innocuous ways. The photo album itself is not outright racist, the pictures are human and vibrant, and it is clear that the nurses formed good relationships with the Convent. However, in the report, a white saviour complex emerges. The nurses believe that they are better qualified to train nurses in Tanzania, despite knowing little about the country itself. Furthermore, on a visit to a hospital, they observe that the hospital has a problem with staff stealing drugs and selling them on the Black Market. Regardless of whether or not the observation is true, it still carries a patronising colonial undertone.
This photo album highlights the importance of centring race in the archives. Without an understanding of racism, it would be impossible to understand the unbalanced power relations of two white women going to an African country in order to instruct them.'
You can find the other primary source reviews on the ArawaK Community Trust blog and the St Mary’s Guildhall blog. You can also find out more about the project by following us on Twitter/X @CCCHProject.
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