The Royal Navy flagship, HMS Bulwark,
on patrol off the coast of Britain.
Over 200 years ago,
the Royal Navy was preparing for battle
against the combined forces of France and Spain.
It all came to a head off the Spanish coast at Cape Trafalgar.
OK, thank you very much for coming along this afternoon.
18,000 sailors went into battle for Britain.
Trafalgar is one of the most famous and celebrated battles in all of
British history. But what we've forgotten is that among the men who
served under Admiral Nelson were over 100 black sailors.
These were men who had been born in Africa or born into slavery in the
British colonies in the West Indies and North America,
and some of them were black Georgians,
men who had homes and wives and children back home in Britain.
In London, a bronze relief at the base of Nelson's Column shows one of
these forgotten black sailors.
Guarding Nelson is a young black man,
one of the men who helped him win his greatest victory.
In this series, we're uncovering Britain's forgotten black history.
There was so much dirty fighting back then.
If somebody bent over, you would knee them.
- It was like... - I'm getting the message.
We're remembering some of the forgotten events and people...
And what do you know about your famous ancestor?
He changed the world.
..and putting up permanent memorials in cast iron and stone...
APPLAUSE
..across Britain, Africa and the Caribbean.
From a black historical point of view, it's monumental,
it is monumental.
These are the names of the black servicemen
who fought in the Battle of Trafalgar.
Today, 21st century sailors are remembering the black mariners of
Trafalgar in their own way...
James Black.
..with a memorial wreath at sea.
John Abraham.
I'm here today because of them,
and every name that I read out is like...
I'm so proud...
that that person was there. They took part in that battle.
Some of these men were volunteers.
Others where probably press-ganged.
George Brown.
These black men were fighting for Britain at a time when an enormous
struggle was being fought over the meaning of freedom.
This is the story of how black people were thrust into the centre
of that great battle of ideas,
how the concept of freedom was used and abused, denied,
claimed and corrupted,
in what became one of the most dramatic and shocking chapters
in the black history of Britain.
Britain's relationship with Africa and Africans stretches back nearly
2,000 years.
And the 17th and 18th centuries are among the most shocking and tragic
parts of that long story.
To understand it, I've travelled over 3,000 miles
to a small island in the Sierra Leone River.
This is Bunce Island.
Hidden beneath the trees are the ruins of a slave fortress.
The first fortress was built here in the 17th century.
It's lain abandoned and forgotten for almost two centuries.
It was in places like this that the British slave trade began.
The island itself is peaceful,
but the peacefulness is a camouflage
for the misery that went on here.
Slaves were bought, sold and imprisoned here
before being shipped to British colonies
in North America and the Caribbean.
These are the outside fortification walls.
We are actually outside the fort itself.
Heritage Commissioner, Isatu Smith,
is working to bring the story of Bunce Island back to life.
So, this is the trading area
where the slaves and trade goods would have been brought.
The slaves would all have been marched up the road where we
just came through, and once they get here
the traders will examine them like cattle.
They will examine their eyes, their teeth, their nose.
They will hit them on their knees for them to jump up and make sure
they are not lame, they are very physically fit before they
would make a bid for them.
This is where the slave traders lived, this was their mansion.
I can't help noticing that there are windows in the slave traders' house.
Would they have overlooked...
- the slave yard? - The windows are overlooking...
I mean they are looking directly into the slave yard,
and you can imagine why.
These are prized possessions,
so you want to make sure you can keep an eye on them,
so the slave traders, literally behind this wall, have lavish meals,
entertaining in grand style, whilst right behind the windows is
wretched souls.
Imagine being shackled to nine other people and you're all, inwardly,
you are grieving.
The British were masters of the slave trade.
In total, Britain transported more than three million people
into slavery over two and a half centuries
of involvement in the trade.
I've read about this structure and I've read what historians have
speculated that it might be.
Are those speculations right, do you think?
Probably true. This was the "rape house"
- where female captives... - The "rape house?"
..were raped by their male slave owners.
And they built a structure to do it?
They built a structure to do it.
The left side of the structure was used as a toilet facility
and there is a room on the other side
where the female slaves were probably raped, yes.
God.
If you are looking for happy bedtime stories,
- this is not the place for you. - You're on the wrong island.
You're on the wrong island. You're on the wrong island.
In its early stages,
Britain's slave trade was run for the benefit
of those at the very top of the establishment.
One of the companies that used to run Bunce Island
sold more Africans into slavery than any company in British history,
and that was the Royal African Company.
I've got here a document.
This is from January 1672.
It lists all of the major investors.
His Royal Highness, James, Duke of York.
And it says here that he is the governor of the company,
which is about the modern equivalent of a CEO, a Chief Executive Officer.
James, Duke of York, is the future James II,
and we know that slaves who were held here
by the Royal African Company had
the company initials, RAC, branded onto them, but some of them,
and this included the children, had the letters, DY, for Duke of York,
burnt into their chest.
Bunce Island is part of our shared past with Sierra Leone.
And British history can never be fully understood
without knowing what happened in places like this.
Almost two centuries after the island was abandoned,
the story is being remembered and retold.
People who live along the river are gathering to honour
the memory of the thousands of men, women and children
transported into slavery from this site.
It's important because, as a country,
we need to have a story to tell.
If you know nothing about your history,
then where are you heading to?
Culture is important.
Any country that neglects culture is like building a house upon the sand.
You only have to scratch the surface
to find yet more evidence of this island's disturbing past.
So, the guys were digging the hole to put the post in that they're
going to put the plaque on, and they've uncovered this,
- which is a wine bottle? - It's probably an old English wine bottle.
This wine bottle has probably been buried for over a century,
and we've just unearthed it now.
So this is the most horrible thing we found because this is a nail.
Now, there's lots of uses for nails in the slave fortress...
Yes, including running them through the shackles.
So, attaching shackles to people's limbs.
- Yes. - These are the two existences on this island.
There's a life of decadence and partying for the slave traders,
and then there's this -
a nail to attach you to the deck of a slave ship for the Africans who
were bought and sold in this yard here.
This permanent memorial to the thousands of Africans
who were enslaved here acknowledges our shared history.
One, two, three!
APPLAUSE
There's no way any human being can come here
and know the story behind this place
and not feel something for this place.
We cannot afford to not remember
the suffering that went on here.
We cannot afford to not remember the people who died here.
We have a duty to remember the good, the bad and the ugly,
and this is one of the ugliest aspects of our history,
our joint history. We need to remember.
We cannot forget these people.
The money from places like Bunce Island
poured back into London.
For decades, the royal monopoly shut out
independent merchants and traders.
But they soon started to demand their own share of the spoils.
Dr William Pettigrew has been studying the conflict
between the two sides.
So if you tried to break in to the slave trade,
if you go to Africa in your own ship and try to enslave Africans
and ship them to the Americas, the Royal Navy will catch you.
They, at certain points, will capture you and, not only that,
they will imprison you without a jury trial.
That's very important, because in the 17th century,
what was more English than the constitutional right
to a jury trial?
This was a sacred sort of birthright.
But the African Company was using sort of pernicious legal innovations
to enforce its monopoly.
So, the company is behaving in ways that aren't English.
It's depicted by its opponents as the kind of embodiment of all things
that is not English, and what's required is to rebuild,
re-establish and recondition
the transatlantic slave trade around English values,
and especially a distinctively English notion of freedom.
So these traders feel that,
unless their freedom to be slave traders is recognised
by the King and Parliament, that their rights are being curtailed?
- Absolutely. - So, the freedom to be slave traders.
Cheek by jowl comes this clearly articulated belief
that it is an almost sacred English birthright to have access
to a trade in enslaved human beings.
Using the argument of freedom,
the independent traders smashed the royal monopoly...
..and turned Britain
into the biggest slave trading nation in the world.
By the 1760s,
up to 40,000 Africans each year were being transported
across the Atlantic in British ships.
The Royal Africa Company made a lot of money for the Stuart kings
and its shareholders, but it was never able to supply
the British colonies in the West Indies and North America
with enough slaves to meet demand.
The private independent traders were far more efficient.
To use the rather clinical language of modern business,
they cut their overheads, they reduced wastage
and they expanded capacity.
Within 15 years,
they had increased the supply
of slaves to the British colonies by 300%.
By the end of the 18th century,
the profits from slavery were helping to fuel
Britain's Industrial Revolution.
And it also had an impact across the globe,
transforming Britain's colonies.
The American state of Virginia.
For almost 150 years, it was part of the British Empire.
In the 17th century,
settlers here were feeding Europe's ever-growing appetite for tobacco.
What was taking place here was something like
an agricultural gold rush.
Tobacco was an exotic crop, it was fashionable
and, as we now know, it's highly addictive,
and demand for it in Britain skyrocketed.
And the farmers in Virginia were rushing to get in on the act.
There was endless supplies of land here.
What there wasn't was enough labour to farm it.
- So, take this one out? - Mm-hmm.
OK. And then...
Almost.
Tobacco is an extremely labour-intensive crop.
It requires constant care and attention...
..and each leaf is picked by hand.
At first, these fields were worked by indentured servants -
poor Britons who sold their labour for a number of years.
But there was never enough labour to satisfy demand.
Yeah! I got it. Thank you.
After the Royal African Company had lost its monopoly and the private
independent slave traders had taken over,
the number of African slaves being brought into the North American
colonies began to enormously increase,
and in that moment of transition,
the planters of North America made a decision that was going to change
the histories of Britain and later the United States,
and they began to abandon indentured service and replace it with slavery.
With its manicured lawns and Georgian facade,
anyone coming here might mistake this for a little piece of Britain.
And yet, when it was built,
this British colony was already a different world.
British laws giving everyone basic rights and liberties didn't reflect
this new racially divided society.
So, in 1660, Virginia passes a law to make slavery hereditary.
It says here that "all children born in this country shall be held,
"bond or free, according to the condition of their mother."
What that means is that if your mother's a slave,
you're born a slave and you die a slave.
This law says that "it shall not be lawful for any Negro to depart
"from his master's ground without a certificate from his master,
"mistress or overseer."
This most chilling act was passed at the end of the 1660s.
This act says that "if any slave shall resist his master
"and then they are punished or corrected by their master,
"and, by the extremity of the correction,
"that slave should chance to die,
"that his death shall not be a felony."
This law makes it legal to kill a black person.
This is the systematic use of the law to strip black people
of any rights, and to eventually strip them of their humanity,
and the law is the weapon to do that.
These laws were known as slave codes.
The British Empire now had two contradictory legal systems.
In the colonies, laws confirmed that slaves where property...
..while in Britain, the common law guaranteed basic freedoms.
Slavery was raising some really difficult questions for the British.
The first was, where did slavery begin and where did it end?
Now, there was no question that slavery was legal under the laws of
Virginia and Barbados and the other colonies, but what about here?
What happened when a slave was taken off a boat
and took their first step on English soil?
There were no plantations in Britain,
but black people were bought and sold in British ports
and lived as slaves in British cities,
but their legal status was unclear.
A chance encounter between two men of extraordinary determination was
about to bring matters to a head.
One was a Georgian gentleman.
He was an icon.
I think that it's always important to be reminded
of all the lawyers who helped to bring about
the abolition of slavery.
The other was an enslaved boy.
What was yesterday's crime is today's normality,
and without lawyers pushing those boundaries constantly,
we'd never have that change.
In 1765, a teenage boy was brought to this hospital.
His name was Jonathan Strong and he was a slave.
And the man who claimed to be his owner
had beaten him about the head and the neck
with a pistol and then dumped him in the street to die,
and he'd been found in the street by a minor civil servant
named Granville Sharp, who brought him here, paid his medical bills,
and very probably saved his life,
and that's easily how the story could have ended,
as a random act of kindness on the streets of Georgian Britain.
But two years later,
Jonathan Strong was abducted and sold to a Jamaican slave owner.
Determined to keep his freedom, he asked Sharp for help.
Sharp didn't have any legal training
but he went before a magistrate
and successfully argued for Strong's release.
What Granville Sharp discovered was that the case of Jonathan Strong
wasn't an isolated incident.
Black people were routinely being kidnapped on the streets,
bundled onto ships, bound for slavery in the West Indies.
Granville Sharp, a man who was fanatically committed
to the ideals of British freedom,
was to spend the next 50 years of his life fighting to
prove that slavery was incompatible with the laws of England.
Sharp knew that, on the question of slavery, the law was a mess.
He made it his mission to prove that slavery
was in conflict with English law.
Lawyer Harry Potter has studied his life's work.
Were they animals?
Did they have any rights at all?
Were they property?
And, of course, I'm talking about human beings.
Enter Granville Sharp.
Sharp taught himself the law and, in 1772,
he won a test case that forced the courts
to declare slavery effectively illegal in England.
He had a deep Christian commitment
and an unbending moral certainty,
a lodestone that guided him throughout his life,
and he considered that what was immoral could not be legal.
One of Sharp's descendants will unveil a plaque to both men
at St Bart's, the hospital that treated Jonathan Strong.
And now we'll unveil the plaque.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Members of the legal and medical professions are paying tribute
with quotes from Sharp's anti-slavery work.
It is genuinely exciting to meet you,
cos I'm someone who thinks your ancestor
should be far more famous than he is.
I think Granville's achievements are very far reaching, even now.
There was an incredibly moving passage I read about him where,
after learning that the Act of Abolition had finally passed,
he fell to his knees and thanked God, which is an incredible image.
My father's middle name is Granville,
and my son Arthur's middle name is also Granville as well.
Sharp has been overshadowed by other anti-slavery campaigners...
..but he was one of the first abolitionists.
As a black female lawyer,
it makes me very proud to be part of an industry that's constantly
making waves and challenging the status quo.
The encounter between Sharp and Jonathan Strong was a first step
in the campaign against slavery.
Jonathan's story could have been my story.
I was fortunate enough to be born in 1984 and to have certain luxuries
that he didn't have,
but, for the grace of God, I could have been born in the 1700s,
and I could've been Jonathan Strong.
There would've been absolutely no distinction between he and I.
And what do you know about your famous ancestor, Granville Sharp?
He changed the world.
That's certainly true.
PIPES AND DRUMS ARE PLAYED
Just three years after Sharp's historic victory,
on the other side of the Atlantic a storm was brewing.
In 1775, after 160 years as a British colony,
the American Patriots wanted to kick the British out.
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
Waving the banner of liberty,
Patriot rebels fought British Loyalists
in the name of American independence.
- Good day, fellow Virginians. - APPLAUSE
Good day, fellow Patriots.
APPLAUSE AND ENTHUSIASTIC CHEERING
When Americans come together to celebrate Independence Day,
the history that they're recalling is a really familiar one of the
Independence Declaration, of the founding fathers.
These United Colonies are and of right ought to be
free and independent states.
But what's usually forgotten,
is that there were in effect two American Revolutions.
There's the one that's being celebrated here today,
and then there's the revolution of the African-Americans,
the revolution of the slaves.
- Hip-hip! - CROWD: - Hooray!
- Hip-hip! - Hooray! - Hip-hip! - Hooray!
In this forgotten Revolution,
thousands of slaves fled the plantations seeking liberty.
But they weren't fighting the British, they wanted to join them.
The British Loyalists wanted to find a way of undermining the rebels.
Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia,
made a cold military calculation.
He promised freedom to all male slaves
who escaped from American Patriots to fight on the British side.
A lot of Americans don't know that the British offered enslaved people
freedom, but when you really think about it,
it's kind of interesting to see a lot of what happened
back in the 18th century...
almost being, in some ways,
forward-thinking from where America ended up for many, many,
many generations.
What do you think the reaction would have been, if you're a slave, living
on a plantation around here, and you hear news of Dunmore's Proclamation?
Um, the first thing...
the first thing you're going to really hear is trepidation.
Why would I trust them?
No-one has ever talked to me about freeing me,
and now all of a sudden you want to give me freedom?
What's the catch?
This offer was politically motivated.
Both sides owned slaves,
and the British slave trade was still booming.
But this offer of freedom encouraged thousands of American slaves to
escape, risking their lives to reach a fleet of ships
waiting on the James River.
Now, the slaves who'd got here had already dodged slave patrols,
they'd already taken their lives in their hands,
but to claim this extraordinary offer of freedom,
they had to get to the British.
Some of them got in boats and rode out to the British ships, and some,
it's said, waded through the reeds and were picked up, and a few,
we're told, literally swam to freedom.
When they were on board the British ships,
they were formed into a new unit -
Lord Dunmore's Royal Ethiopian Regiment.
They had a British musket put on their shoulders,
and sewn onto their new uniforms was a badge that carried a slogan that
was just incredible for the 1770s.
It read, "Liberty to slaves."
Even with the support of their new black regiments,
the British couldn't win the war.
In 1783, they prepared to evacuate New York, the last British outpost.
But they decided to keep the promise they had made
to the slaves who'd fought alongside them.
Professor Maya Jasanoff has helped uncover the story
of the black men who fought for the British.
Why do you think the British fulfilled the promises
they'd made to these former slaves who joined their forces?
They didn't have to.
I think you can give a cynical answer
and you can give an idealistic answer.
The cynical answer would be that it's a way of striking
at the Patriots.
The Americans had owned slaves,
it was just a way of kind of thumbing their nose
at the Americans in these last moments of the war.
The idealistic reason, though,
I think is also one that we need to give a little bit of credit to,
and that's the answer that says, "You know,
"these are promises that we made and we believe in keeping our word."
This was the first mass liberation of slaves in the British Empire,
taking place decades before slavery would be abolished,
taking place at a time when Britain, paradoxically,
was still the world's largest slave trader.
What was shown to be possible was a kind of emancipation and a kind of
black freedom and a kind of British freedom
that would go on to have very, very important
afterlives in the decades to come.
The history of America's war for independence
and the loss of Britain's first empire is incomplete
without this story of the black men who fought
in the British Army and claimed their own freedom.
Their struggle and the story of the other American Revolution
has for too long been a forgotten chapter
in the histories of both Britain and the United States.
INSTRUMENTAL ROCK MUSIC PLAYS
Some of the former slaves who fought against the American rebels
came back to Britain.
Among them was a man who went on to take Georgian Britain by storm.
One of the former slaves who managed to get out of America
was a teenage boy from Staten Island called Bill Richmond.
During the Revolution, he'd become a servant to Hugh Percy,
the Duke of Northumberland, and came back to Britain with Percy.
He was given a job in the household,
a job that millions of white Britons would have dreamed of.
He was given an education
and became apprenticed as a cabinet-maker in York
and married a local girl.
This was a man who had been incredibly lucky.
He'd gone from being a slave to being a free man with a family and a
trade. And then, in his early 40s, he made the most bizarre decision.
He gave it all up to become a bare-knuckle boxer in London.
Bill Richmond was just one of the crowd at a bare-knuckle match in
Wimbledon when he was challenged to a fight.
It was the spark that set him on course to become a boxing star
and one of Georgian Britain's most famous celebrities.
The world of prize fighting, of bare-knuckle boxing,
was special to the British in a way no other sport was,
because the fighter was said to be the embodiment of the national
characteristics of bravery and manliness and resilience,
all the things the British liked to believe made them who they were.
Now, these were the same decades when Britain was the biggest
slave-trading power in the world, and yet,
by entering into this world, into this sport,
Bill Richmond, a black guy, a former slave,
was able to become not just a star but a national hero.
Here, at Repton Boxing Club in East London,
they know what it takes to survive in the ring.
But Georgian bare-knuckle boxing was far more brutal.
Bill Richmond is a hero for former Olympic champion
Audley Harrison.
Hey, guys. One sec, one sec. Now, look at this.
This is Bill Richmond, this is me.
This is what it would look like, me fighting Bill Richmond,
it'd look like David and Goliath, it would be like,
"Oh, my God, Audley's going to annihilate this little guy."
But Bill Richmond was...
He didn't care about the size. He didn't care about the height.
So how did she survive in the ring? He had someone...
- this sort of size difference... - Right. So, he done a thing
called bob and weave. Look in the distance. Look, I can hit you here,
but every time I throw a punch, this guy was always getting off the
line. Like, hitting me into my body, every time I go,
"Whoa, boom!", he'd hit me to my body.
So, this big guy going...
trying to swing... Could never keep up with him.
Always moving. And every time you missed, he made you pay.
- So, eventually he wore you down. - Georgian boxes don't wear...
It's bare-knuckle, they don't wear gloves.
- Right. - How dangerous is that? What does that mean for a boxer?
So, they don't wear gloves, they don't have head guards,
didn't have a gumshield or whatever they put in their mouths,
and all the tricks they used to use,
you know, gouging your eyes, hit low, use elbows,
there was so much dirty fighting back then.
- If somebody bent over, you'd knee them. - I'm getting the message.
What we talk about now is...the rules in boxing are codified
for the right reasons, so boxers wasn't losing their lives.
Back then, many boxers lost their lives.
So how brave was it for Bill Richmond, man in his 40s,
five foot nine, he knew how dangerous the sport was...
- Yeah. - ..and he goes in the ring. How much bravery did that take?
Think about it.
I'm in slavery. Every day, in slavery,
your life is on the line. People are dying in slavery.
Going in the ring was like...
Do you get what I'm saying? There's no comparison.
- He'd seen worse. - He'd seen far worse.
Bill Richmond won 17 of his 19 professional fights
and became the first black British sports star.
He was a true celebrity
who rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous,
dined with aristocracy
and was a guest at the coronation of George IV.
I think Bill Richmond should be remembered for future generations
because he literally made history.
People don't know his story and they should.
History needs to know about Bill Richmond.
After retirement, he became a publican
and also ran a sports academy,
passing on his skills to the next generation.
Today, a plaque to Britain's first black boxing legend
will be unveiled.
This pub belonged to Bill Richmond's friend
and long-time rival Tom Cribb.
Fans, boxing promoters
and Richmond's biographer, Luke Williams,
are among those here to pay tribute.
Most people have never heard of Bill Richmond.
Yet, before Muhammad Ali, before Jesse Owens, before Jack Johnson,
Bill Richmond was the first sports star of African heritage.
My name is Ambrose Mendy, I am a boxing manager, a boxing promoter.
It's nothing more than fair to say that without Bill Richmond,
I wouldn't be standing here today.
No other black boxer had succeeded in overcoming the prejudice of the
crowd and the public to carve out a successful boxing career.
My name is Hugh Quarshie, I'm an actor.
I think Richmond's life is worth commemorating and certainly worth
celebrating, not necessarily because of what he achieved as a boxer or as
a pugilist, but for how he lived his life.
Indeed, he viewed boxing as an art.
As Bill Richmond himself once said, "A gentlemen, sir,
"only uses his hands to defend himself and not to attack."
He combined physical strength with intellectual strength
and I think that's not a bad example to follow.
I think it's appropriate that we have two of the new generation
of boxing here and who are going to unveil for us
the plaque to Bill Richmond.
APPLAUSE
I grew up in a rough area in London
where a lot of crime takes place and a lot of young men
end up in prison or in trouble.
Role models like Bill Richmond,
he's just a reminder that anything's possible,
that with hard work and dedication and perseverance,
anything's achievable.
I actually think Bill Richmond's story should be taught
in the schools, because it's a real powerful testament to
never, ever giving up and overcoming your situation, no matter what.
You know, I'm African, I know the virtues that my dad wanted to instil
in myself and my brothers and sisters as kids, and here we are,
here we are today. It's amazing, it really...
And from a black historical point of view, it's monumental.
It is monumental.
Unlike Bill Richmond,
most of the Black Loyalists who found themselves in London
weren't rich or famous.
Many who joined the British Army in America ended up destitute.
This area is the Seven Dials in London.
It's really rather posh these days,
but in the 18th century this was one of London's worst slums,
and it was to the streets around here that poor black people who had
escaped from America gathered together.
Now, the sight of hundreds of black people, homeless, hungry,
freezing on the streets of London, attracted the attention
of the great and the good.
Some of them thought that what was happening on these streets was
a national disgrace,
that men who'd fought in the Revolutionary Wars were being
betrayed by the nation.
Others just didn't like the sight of so many black people
out on the streets.
But what they all agreed was that something had to be done.
A Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor was set up.
And a plan was hatched to send them thousands of miles away
to establish a new colony in Sierra Leone.
To abolitionists like Granville Sharp, this was an act of charity...
..but for some on the committee, the scheme was an opportunity
to get rid of the Black Poor.
In 1787,
a fleet of ships bound for Sierra Leone
set sail with 441 people on board.
The passenger lists are held at the National Archives.
I've wanted to see these documents for about 20 years,
and it's...
stunning to see them.
These are the lists of the Black Poor.
This tells us their names and it tells us a little bit
about who they were,
and also their relationships to one another.
But the list that's always most intrigued historians is this one.
This one is white women married to black men.
Isaac Benn, he's one of the black men.
If we go to the list
of white women, there's Eliza Benn, his wife.
Down here is Peter Ornfield,
and in the list of the white women, Elizabeth Ornfield.
And in this family, we can go to the list of the black children
and there's their son, William Ornfield.
So, this is black Britain, this is mixed race Britain,
this is interracial Britain,
this is the Britain that we celebrate,
that we tell the world that we are, that we're this great melting pot.
Well, here it is in the 1780s.
This is a passenger list of people heading off to Africa on a really
precarious and dangerous settlement scheme,
and your heart is in your mouth a bit, because you...
I feel kind of drawn to these people,
but I know where they're going.
They don't.
In the end, 380 of the Black Poor
were convinced that their only chance of a future lay here
in Africa, but by the time they arrived here,
millions of Africans over hundreds of years had been taken from these
shores and carried across the Atlantic and sold into slavery.
This community, these black Londoners,
were the first Africans ever to make that journey in the opposite
direction, to come back to Africa as free settlers,
hoping that their future could be built here.
Granville Sharp believed that the black settlers would thrive here.
He was convinced that the land was fertile and the climate mild.
So he turned his mind to imagining how this new
free black society would be organised.
What's most incredible about this whole scheme was that the system of
government that Sharp wanted the settlers to adopt
was based on something called the frankpledge.
Now, this is a form of communal society
that had existed in Anglo-Saxon England in the early Middle Ages,
and Sharp was convinced that this was the system
that was going to allow the Black Poor of London
to build a new England here on the shores of Africa.
He says, "The most certain and effectual mode of securing peace,
"right, and mutual protection for any community
"is the old English system of mutual frankpledge."
There's much about this system of government that sounds
too good to be true.
Everybody was to contribute equally
in support of the burdens of the state, and, of course,
everyone was entitled to an equal voice
in the Common Council or Parliament.
But what's truly surreal about it is that this province of freedom,
as he called it, was built
on one of the superhighways of the slave trade.
The slave fortress of Bunce Island is just 20 miles upriver.
Founded on Anglo-Saxon ideas of freedom,
the colony was meant to prove that crops could be
an alternative export to slaves.
But the climate was hostile,
and the settlers were plagued by crop failures and tropical diseases.
The scheme was disastrously impractical...
..and by 1787, most of the settlers had died.
But that wasn't the end of the story.
Other settlers followed, searching for freedom...
..and the experiment kept going.
Historians think that the site of the original province of freedom was
somewhere to the east, where we're driving now.
But as you can see,
this whole area is under the concrete of modern Freetown.
Now, the fact that there is a city here is because,
even after the disaster that had befallen the London Black Poor,
new black settlers were brought here.
Now, they didn't come from the streets of London.
They were brought here from other parts of the British Empire,
and some of the people that you can see
on the streets of modern Freetown
are their descendants.
In 1792,
1,200 Black Loyalists who'd sided with Britain
during the American Revolution arrived from Nova Scotia.
They were followed, eight years later, by the Maroons -
Jamaican slaves who'd rebelled
and been deported by the colonial government.
They stuck to the democratic ideals of the first settlers.
And this became the first place anywhere in the world
where women voted for public office.
This is the only known image of the first settlement here at Freetown,
and it's just a few huts and some land that's been cleared for crops.
But to the right of the image, beside the Union Jack,
is a giant cotton tree.
Now, that's one of the indigenous species of tree
here in Sierra Leone,
but it's also one of the constants in the history of Freetown,
because it's believed that every one of the waves of settlers
who came to this city from London, from Nova Scotia,
and the Maroons from Jamaica,
that all of them held their public meetings
under a giant cotton tree.
They called their meetings their "palavers".
Today, in the centre of Freetown,
is an absolutely enormous and ancient cotton tree.
Now, nobody knows if this is THE cotton tree where the early settlers
had their meetings, but it's become the symbol of the city,
and it's also become the symbol of the ideals and the hopes that were
brought here by those early settlers.
Anybody who passes under the cotton tree should remember our history.
The history of being slaves, taken away by force...
..but then, after centuries, they were brought back,
back home.
When our forefathers
were finally free from slavery,
the cotton tree was the first place they rested
and said a prayer there.
With all those memories and the natural things around here,
whenever I pass by, I feel at peace, honestly.
The cotton tree is important to me
because it helps us know that this is where we came from
and we need to pass it on from generation to generation
so it can never be forgotten. It's really important.
And it's here, at the cotton tree,
that the people of Sierra Leone are unveiling a plaque in honour of the
pioneers who founded their nation.
TRADITIONAL SINGING AND DRUMMING
We hope that if we put up a plaque in the centre of Freetown,
we might persuade a few people to come and celebrate with us.
Well, it's about an hour before the event
and we're expecting 200 people.
The government have put up marquees, there's a red carpet,
they've closed the roads.
The British High Commissioner is here and representatives
from all the ethnic groups of Freetown are coming.
It's quite incredible.
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen.
Good morning.
Today marks another very important day
in the history of Great Britain and the Republic of Sierra Leone.
I take this opportunity
on behalf of the settlers
who have departed to the other side
to recount a reciprocal acknowledgement
to the British for the selfless efforts made
over 200 years ago
to found this corner for our occupation,
and that now means so much
to all the different ethnic groups
to whom it is home sweet home.
- I thank you. - APPLAUSE
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
APPLAUSE
This is the cultural, spiritual centre of this whole country.
This is the perfect place, I think, on this continent
to discuss and to explore and to celebrate that...
this country's history and Britain's history are conjoined.
They are part of the same history.
Remembering these often forgotten stories gives us a richer account of
some of the deeply troubling chapters in our history.
From the thousands of Africans transported into slavery...
..to those who risked their lives fighting for Britain...
..the unsung heroes who fought for justice...
..and the men and women who crossed continents in pursuit of freedom.
Next time, Queen Victoria's black goddaughter...
Grandmother used to tell us about this ancestor.
We just thought this was an old lady rambling on about the past.
Mill workers against slavery...
It's that guts to say, "This is the right thing," you know,
"This is the right thing, let's do it."
..and rebellion in Jamaica.
If you'd like to find out how to research black history in your area,
there's an iWonder guide with links to our partners at...