Newspaper article about the erasure of Olive Morris memory at Olive Morris House that appeared in South London Press on 11th November 2008.
Civil rights hero Olive ‘erased from history’ by Walter Hemmens
A council has been accused of “erasing from history” the name of a woman hailed as one of Brixton’s heroes in the 1970s struggle for civil rights.
When the Lambeth council building in Brixton Hill names after Olive Morris, a member of the Brixton Black Panthers, was revamped as a “customer centre” last year, her name was removed from the part of the building used by hundreds of members of the public everyday.
A photograph of Olive and a plaque, unveiled by her mother Doris in 1986, were also taken down.
Olive’s name now appears only above and inside the staff entrance.
Veteran civil rights campaigner and poet Clarence Thompson said: “People who have dedicated their lives to changing the quality of life in Lambeth should be honoured and it should be forever.”
“You wouldn’t go interfering with Nelson’s Column would you? Why have they got to do that?”
“It sends a bad signal.”
He was speaking after a meeting of the REmembering Olive Collective (ROC), an organisation set up last year to preserve Olive’s memory.
The meeting was held at the Karibu Centre in Gresham Road and was attended by Emory Douglas and Billy X Jennings – two veterans of the US Black Panthers that inspired Olive and the Brixton Movement.
Born in Jamaica in 1952, Olive made her mark as a feminist and black activist until she died from cancer aged 27.
Only five out of 20 people spoken to by the South London Press outside Olive Morris House knew anything about her.
Liz Obi, chairwoman of the ROC, who squatted at 121 Railton Road with Olive and was in the Brixton Black Women’s Group set up by Olive, said last week: “She was a whirlwind of a person, really inspirational.
She had a lot of energy. It’s tragic she died so young, she had a lot to give to the community.”
Ms Obi said the ROC and the Morris family wanted to reinstate a display about Olive’s life in the customer centre, but had been told by the council it would not match the centre’s new “corporate image”.
Poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, who was a member of the Brixton Black Panthers with her in the 1970s said after last week’s meeting: “Its tragic really, it shouldn’t be allowed to happen.”
“She was someone who was very significant for Lambeth, and its part of the borough’s heritage.”
A council spokesman said: “We very much want to pay tribute to Olive Morris and her legacy in Lambeth, and we’re looking to reinstate a plaque near to its original location as well as looking at further options to mark her contribution.”
“The building is already named after Olive Morris, in her memory and displays her name on the outside.”
newsdesk@slp.co.uk
News item announcing the Creation and Liberation event which appeared in the South London Press on 31st October 2008, Page 8.
Black Panthers talk in memory of Olive
Brixton: Veterans of the radical US Black Panther movement are giving a talk on Monday to commemorate their UK peer Olive Morris – the community activist who died in 1979, aged 27. Creation for Liberation: Black Panthers in Brixton includes talks by US Panthers Emory Douglas and Billy X Jennings, Brixton Panther Neil Kenlock and poet Clarence Thompson.
It is at the Karibu Education Centre, Greshan Road at 7pm, £10 on the door, £7 in advance, £5 for U18s. Email Black Cultural Archives at info@bcaheritage.org.uk or call 02075828516 for details.
News article about the newly formed Remembering Olive Collective which appeared in Lambeth Life, 15th October 2008, Page 12.
Olive Morris: a retrospective
Last year’s Black History Month saw the launch of a social history project to chronicle the life of Brixton activist Olive Morris.
One of Lambeth Council’s main buildings is named after her, but when artist Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre looked into her life she struggled to find any information. So she decided to try to find out more and used Black History Month to launch an appeal for information from the community.
She was soon put in touch with Liz Obi, one of Olive’s friends and a fellow activist during the 70s. Twelve months on and the pair have just launched the Remembering Olive Collective, which will continue to look at her life and achievements. They have been joined by members of Olive’s family and other people who knew her.
“We want to create some public memories and reinstate this woman’s position in history. In the group there are women who knew her and members of her family. What we are interested in is how we keep alive her history and preserve her achievements,” said Ana.
The group came together through a shared interest in Olive’s past and are now working together to spread that interest. Olive was an activist who was heavily involved with emerging social and political movements in the 1970s. She set up the Brixton Black Women’s Group, was a founder member of The Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) and part of the squatter movement. However she died in 1979 aged just 27 and Ana and the rest of the collective are keen for her life to be more widely known.
She said: “She was a very interesting character and involved in so many different things – the black panthers, the squatter’s movement and political activism.
“There is a lot of information about from the 50s and 60s and the Windrush generation settling here, then there are the Brixton riots from the 80s. But there did not seem to be much from the 70s, which was Olive’s time. It was a very militant time, there was the Vietnamese War and an economic crisis. It has a lot of relevance for now.”
Ana added: “A lot of the men who were involved in the movement are now well known, but the women are not. So looking at Olive’s life and the input she had on so many things people, especially woman can see why some things are the way they are now.”
The next meeting of the ROC will take place on 5 November at the Lambeth Women’s Project, 166A Stockwell Road, Brixton from 6.30pm and is open to all women.
To commemorate the anniversary of Olive Morris’ death, the Morris family and friends visited her burial place in Streatham Park Cemetery.
My family and myself would like to thank everyone that took time out of there busy day to attend the Olive Morris rememberance afternooon on Saturday the 12th July. Hope we can all work together to keep her memories alive.
Jennifer Morris Lewis – Olive Morris sister
A special one-hour radio programme presenting the ongoing project Do you remember Olive Morris? was broadcast as part of the STUDENT RISE season at SOAS’s OpenAir Radio, on Friday 30th November 2007, at 2pm. The programme outlined the origins of the Olive Morris oral history project, and introduced the audience to Morris’ story. A selection of music tracks by or about inspiring women who broke through gender and race barriers – accompanied and introduced the range of areas in which Olive Morris was involved as an activist.
To listen to the show visit www.openair.org.uk, and scroll to the bottom of the page where you will find the player.
OpenAir was the official media partner of STUDENT RISE 07, a series of events at universities across London to promote the message of anti-racism and celebrate multiculturalism.
A short biography of Olive Morris with a link to this blog has been published in an North American website that list extensive links and resources about Black History and Culture.
The primary aim of this website is to encourage research activity on people of African descent and to provide information to the study of the African Diaspora. A historical perspective of a nation, its people, and its cultural evolution. Please make sure to look through the 1000+ Slave Narratives on my website. Many of the colored soldiers from the Revolutionary war are true heroes so take a look at the images of them as well as the other colored soldiers throughout the 18TH 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY.
An article about Olive Morris by Jon Newman – Head of Lambeth Archives, was published on the Friday October 19th 2007 edition of South London Press. The article included a link to this blog.
On Monday 1 October 2007, on a very wet London evening, a group of people braved the weather to gather at Minet Library for the official launch of this weblog.
The launch consisted in a presentation about the origin of the project, and a demonstration of the blog (its contents and how to use it). Liz Obi shared with the audience some personal words about Olive, and qualified her interest in recuperating the memory of Olive Morris. The discussion was then opened to the audience, that included some people who knew Olive both personally and from references, and some others who simply wanted to find out more about her. Conversation continued over drinks and music, and people had a chance to look at the exhibition about Olive Morris that Liz Obi kindly brought into the Library. The few of us who went on in the search for a pub, were rewarded with a chance encounter with an old friend of Olive.
Many thanks to all that came, and to all of you who have sent emails of support, and volunteered help to take the project further.
Liz Obi’s Remembering Olive exhibition can be seen at Minet Library until Friday 14 October. It will then go on tour to Lambeth’s Women Project (166A Stockwell Road), where on Tuesday 16 October 6.30 they will be launching a reading club with a selection of books related to Black History. Lambeth Women’s Project is currently facing the threat of closure. Visit their link to support their petition.
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Here is a personal account of the evening:
I arrived early to set up the equipment, and was soon joined by Liz, who brought the exhibition about Olive Morris she had presented in 2000 at Brixton Library. Liz also brought some candles, incense and some of her plants. The exhibition boards were covered in African textiles. As an artist, I was pleased to see (and gently reminded of) how little it takes to give a personal touch to what we do, when we take temporary occupation of an institutional space.
The presentation was introduced by Jon Newman from Lambeth Archives, who explained why the Archives had chosen to support the project. The use of weblog technology was an innovative tool, but also the fact that it was an artist-led project brought “a different sensibility” to their job of collecting and preserving local history.
I started the presentation by welcoming the audience, and as an introduction and a form of setting the wider background against which this project was conceived, we showed a 6 minutes long video, made the previous week in collaboration with Liz Obi.
I went on to tell the story of how I came to be interested in Olive Morris, a story that is also narrated in this blog in a separate post (The starting point).
I then showed the blog and its contents to the audience, and explained the different sections in which I have tried to organise the information. I wanted to give a sense of the breadth of Olive Morris work and interests, but try to keep a non-linear, or non-chronological order. I described the fragmented way in which I have compiled the information, and that I hoped the blog maintained that open structure, where snapshots from Olive’s life and her times could be connected through the personal journeys or interests of those reading and contributing to the blog.
Following the more formal part of the presentation, Liz Obi spoke to the audience about her personal relationship to Olive Morris, and about the journey she had embarked a few years ago when she decided to put together the Remembering Olive exhibition. Liz also spoke about Olive’s legacy and what she had learnt from her. She went on to tell the audience about her initial reticence when we first met: “what does this white woman wants to do with Olive’s story”, but understanding the motives she had agreed to collaborate and share her knowledge with me. Liz’s words of support and her engagement with the project had so far been crucial to the development of the blog.
In contrast to Liz’s own search for Olive’s history, where she both had the personal knowledge (dates, places, names) and the trust and access to those who knew and worked with Olive, the issue of me being an “outsider” is – I feel – quite central to the success or failure of the project.
The conversation was then opened to the floor, and this is a summery of the things that were spoken about:
We had the pleasure to count amongst the audience with Sandra, who had known Olive despite being several years younger. Sandra told us how she had moved into 121 Railton Road squat after Liz and Olive moved out, and was involved with her partner in setting up and running Sabaar Bookshop. There was quite an animated discussion about the lack of awareness of this story of Black squats, and of the paradox of having a housing building named after Olive Morris. A lineage of Black squats was traced from 121 Railton Road, to the recently closed Rastafarian Centre at St Agnes Place.
There was also some debate as to whether the naming of buildings and streets are actually a positive thing and the desired recognition of Black people’s achievements, or whether – as Jon Newman pointed out – it could be simply a political gesture that can be easily undone, as it is actually happening in South London nowadays (the renaming of Mary Secoale House was given as an example). The current situation of Olive Morris House refurbishment was discussed, and this is one of the areas where the audience felt there could be some concrete outcome that could come out of this project.
Neil Kenlock – who was present, kindly offered to go through his archive and make his photographs of Olive available free of charge for this blog. Neil reminded the audience that it would be a pity if Olive Morris went down in history as a squatter, because above all, her fight was “a fight for equality, and this is how she should be remembered”. Neil spoke about his photograph (which was the trigger for this project), and told us about Olive’s courage and fearlessness. He said: “it took a lot of courage for her to stand there holding that placard. Those were tough times and many big and strong men didn’t have the gust to do it, but Olive did. She even took her shoes off”.
We also had the honor of counting with Tamara Lewis in the audience. Tamara is Olive’s niece but was born after her death. She said: “seeing and hearing all this, I keep thinking how happy Grandma would have been if she was here today”. This prompted some comments about Ms Doris Morris, and her own engagement with political activism, as the source of both the inspiration and the support that Olive found in her own family.
There was a sense – specially in those who knew little about Olive Morris – of the importance of recuperating her figure within our local community – not just as an inspiration for Black people, but as an example for everyone. As Liz said, what was most important about Olive’s legacy is that she showed us we all can, as individuals, make a difference. That this power we had as individuals to stand up against injustice, is a very real power and that we should not hesitate to use it on our own and in collaboration with others.
With the good atmosphere amongst the audience – a gathering of people paying respects and honoring the memory of Olive Morris – it was easy for all of us to push away the chairs and carry on chatting over a drink, to the sound of some classic reggae tracks.
When it was time to go, a small group of us started on the search for a local pub. We stumbled by chance upon an “old style Brixton pub” of the kind that have now vanished from Brixton centre. Just as we walked into the pub, Liz shouted and run after a man that was popping out to smoke a cigarette. He had been a close friend of Olive throughout her life, and over a few cigarettes shared in the outdoor cold, he pieced together with Liz some memories of Olive’s early youth and later years. It seemed to us that it had been Olive’s spirit guising us to that pub.
Just after midnight Liz Obi, Oniel Williams and I walked together all the way to Brixton, still talking about Olive and her times, the fate of “the 70s struggle”, contemporary politics, the third world, and the reality of life in Brixton as experienced by our children. Just as we were coming into Coldharbour Lane we saw a police van, and several police officers in the process of searching two young Black men. One of the police officers was feeling the youth’s toes over his white sport socks, and another was holding in his silicone gloved hand a forensic evidence bag with a small amount of weed in it. We walked past them and a third police officer volunteered – with a smile – some community relations nicety to us, as we continued our journey without making any fuss.
There it was in a nut shell, the sign of the changing times. Much talk was made on this night about what would Olive Morris would be doing nowadays, were she still alive. For sure she would have something to say.
Olive Morris was both an avid traveler and an internationalist. Towards the end of her life she was to visit China with a delegation of British people, possibly Marxists with whom she had made contact during her University years in Manchester.
These photographs of the trip to China show a more mature Olive, with the same confidence of her younger years but perhaps a little less fury.
It pains to see her relaxed and happy face in this picture by the water, and to think that someone who looks so at ease in the world was to die so soon.
The stamps on her passport indicate that she traveled via Hong Kong, arriving there on August 11 1977 and departing for mainland on August 12 1977. On September 3 1977 she returns to the UK again via Hong Kong.
If you have any information about this trip, or were in the same party, please use the comments box below to share your memories.
On a tip from Liz Obi, I managed to track down Ms Yana Morris, Olive’s sister who works as a head teacher in South London. I made contact with her and sent her information about the project and this weblog. A few days later I received an email from Ms Jennifer Lewis, another of Olive’s sisters:
Dear Ana Laura,
My name is Jennifer and I am Olives other sister, I was pleased to hear of your intentions from Yana. Funnily enough my daughter Tamara had a similar idea some time ago and did try to contact Liz but to no avail. Unfortunately I will not be able to attend the launch in the Minet library however my daughter will attend and I would be happy to contribute in any way I can.
At some stage our mother was actually asked to put some history of Olive’s life on paper, these we found when she passed away and perhaps these would be of use to you in your research?
It is a wonderful discovery to know there is an account of Olive’s story written by her own mother, and hopefully with permission of the family, we will be able to publish some of it in this weblog.
Ms Doris Morris was a steward with the TUC, and it would be also interesting to know whether Bill Morris is related to Olive’s family. (In 1991 Bill Morris became the first black General Secretary of a TUC affiliated union, the TGWU – Transport and General Workers’ Union.)
Errol Morris – Olive’s younger brother posted this tribute as a comment in the Contribute page:
As Olive’s younger brother, she was a key figure in our family setup.
For me she was an advisor as well as a sister with all kinds of problems I had in my life at that time. It was only when she died did I find out about all of her achievements which made me and the family proud. I do remember when I was young, my mum talking to my dad about Olive being arrested “again” for some demo only to be released without being charged, yet again, which made me feel stronger about fighting injustice throughout my life.
She was one of my role models and a good role model to women and all black people living in the UK. If young people knew Olives story, they would find it very interesting, sad, funny and entertaining. It took over 2 years to come to terms with olives death, but now i still feel her presence, watching me and when i pass Olive Morris House, Brixton, it reminds me that she made a difference to people, now my whole family try to do the same.
NOW WE ARE ALL WORKING FOR THE PEOPLE, “SHE WAS A PEOPLE’S PERSON”
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