Seven years ago, in October 2014, I and six others, school history teachers and history PhD students, wrote an open letter to Times Higher Education (THE) drawing attention to the ‘alarmingly low numbers of Black history students at undergraduate and postgraduate level, including the low numbers of those training as teachers.’
Our letter was partly prompted by an article that had appeared in the Guardian in March 2014 with the headline ‘Only three Black applicants win places to train as history teachers’. The article referred to the recruitment of those accepted on postgraduate training courses in 2013.
In 2014, statistics were available for numbers of Black history students at undergraduate level, but there were none relating to postgraduate students. However, four of the signatories to the THE letter were history PhD students and we knew of only a very few others. At the time we estimated that the total number of Black PhD history students was no more than ten in the entire country. We argued then this dire situation clearly had an impact on the low numbers of Black academic historians. There were in 2014, fewer than five such academic historians and none of those had reached the rank of professor. In short, the problem of low numbers of Black academic historians and history teachers in schools was based on the low numbers of history students at universities. The figures showed that history was the third most unpopular subject for undergraduates of African and Caribbean heritage. What was even worse, those who had excelled at history at A level were reluctant to pursue history as undergraduates. And many of those with good GCSE-level grades did not take history at A level.
What was evident was that there were a disconnect between the considerable interest in history at community level, the annual officially supported celebration of Black History Month, the alleged concerns with ‘diversity’, ‘inclusion’ and ‘widening participation’ in education and what actually happened in schools and universities. Young people were telling us that they viewed history as a ‘white, middle-class pursuit’. We approached the HEFCE, which at that time had its own ‘Widening Participation’ committee but they showed no interest at all. However, along with some support from the Royal Historical Society (RHS) and the Historical Association, we convened the History Matters conference in London in 2015 to bring together all those concerned about the problem, in order to find solutions.
The speakers at the History Matters conference were teachers and students, who spoke from their own experience about the challenges they faced. In addition, we heard from two of those who had conducted research into the problem of low representation. The conference concluded that a Eurocentrism curriculum and a lack of positive role models dissuaded many from an engagement with history and made a number of recommendations as to what might be done to change things and to encourage more young people of African and Caribbean heritage to engage with history.
The History Matters initiative is still very much in existence. It immediately led to the creation of the Young Historians Project (YHP) involving some of the conference participants. History Matters now produces its own journal promoting the study of the history of African and Caribbean people in Britain, and it has held two further conferences providing a showcase for young and emerging historians especially those of African and Caribbean heritage. The History Matters conference also led to the creation of the University of Chichester unique MRes in the History of Africa and the African Diaspora, which is completely online and designed to train students of all ages to conduct their own research and become historians. The conference also stirred the RHS to produce its own ‘Race, Ethnicity and Equality’ report in 2018, although it forgot to mention that it had been encouraged to do so as result of its involvement with History Matters.
There have been many other initiatives since, some as a consequence of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 during which there were vociferous demands for more ‘Black History’, and more disquiet about the lack of Black academic historians. One significant recent phenomenon following BLM has been the new academic posts in Black British History that have been created at the universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, Goldsmiths and elsewhere.
Does this not suggest significant progress? Certainly, there are many more history postgraduate students of African and Caribbean heritage than there were seven years ago. At the University of Chichester, one of the smallest universities in the country, we currently have over twenty Black postgraduate students, most of them specializing in Black British History. As for the recently advertised academic posts, time will tell what impact they will have, since they are sometimes been filled by those who have come to Britain from abroad and even those who are not specialists in the subject. There clearly are a few more black academic historians but there is still a very long way to go. Indeed, the RHS report in 2018 concluded that over 96% of academic historians are White, therefore much less diverse than the students they teach. The HESA figures for 2019/2020 do suggest that History has become more popular amongst undergraduates of African and Caribbean heritage. Whereas it was the third most unpopular subject in 2014 it is now the ninth most unpopular, it is ranked 15th in popularity amongst twenty-three subjects. Although as History is included within a group also including ‘philosophical and religious studies’, it is impossible to be sure.
There is still that great disconnect between what type of history young people demand should be provided at schools and universities and what actually exists. Unfortunately, young people in Britain are still unlikely to be taught history by Black teachers, or to benefit from the research and writing of many British historians of African or Caribbean heritage. There is certainly evidence of change but not as quickly nor as extensively as is required.
About the Author
Hakim Adi is Professor of the History of Africa and the African Diaspora at the University of Chichester. He is the author of many publications on the history of Africa and the African diaspora. His two books for children The History of African and Caribbean Communities in Britain and African Migrations have recently been republished by Hachette. His latest book on the History of African and Caribbean people in Britain will be published by Penguin in 2022. www.hakimadi.org/
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