People, Places, Events   

John Richard Archer, born in 1863 and passed away in 1932, was a prominent British politician and activist. He made history in 1913 by becoming the first black mayor of a London borough, specifically Battersea. Archer was recognised for his Pan-Africanist beliefs and served as the inaugural president of the African Progress Union.

Joan Armatrading, born in 1950 in Basseterre, Saint Christopher and Nevis, was the third of six children. Her father worked as a carpenter while her mother was a housewife. At the age of three, she was sent to live with her grandmother in Antigua when her parents moved to Birmingham with her two older brothers. In 1958, at the age of seven, Armatrading joined her parents in Brookfields, Birmingham. Her father, who had played in a band in his youth, did not allow his children

Stuart Henry McPhail Hall FBA (3 February 1932 – 10 February 2014), a Jamaican-born British Marxist sociologist, cultural theorist, and political activist, was a key figure in the development of British Cultural Studies. Alongside Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, he played a crucial role in establishing the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies.