british history they don’t teach you in schools (a thread)

note: i’m not the best at explaining things so i’m sorry in advance if the way i’ve written the thread isn’t helpful at all. also i’ll probably be updating this over a long period of time.

olive morris - she was born in jamaica in 1953 and moved to london aged 9. she was a co-founder of the brixton black women’s group and the organisation of women of asian and african descent (OWAAD). she was also a core member of the british black panther group and was a

marxist leninist. in 1973 she squatted (unlawfully occupied) 21 Railton Road, Brixton with her friend liz obi and this area ended up becoming a hub of political activism. she dedicated her life to fighting against racism, classism and sexism before she died of cancer aged 27 in

1979. she was an amazing woman and if she was still alive today she would’ve been 68 years old.
Here’s a link to an article that talks more about 21 Railton Road if you’re interested - https://libcom.org/history/121-railton-road-lambeth

the bristol bus boycott - after ww2 britain faced labour shortages. so they turned to black people in the caribbean and south asians to help rebuild the country. they were treated with hostility. they struggled to find housing and could only find low paying jobs.
the bristol

omnibus company was a privately owned company and its workers were a part of the transport and general worker’s union. the local branch of the union had decided to ban ‘coloured’ people from working on the buses even though there were shortages.
in response to this discrimination

4 black men decided to create a campaigning group. owen henry, roy hackett, audley evans and prince brown formed the the west indian development council and they chose paul stephenson to be their spokesman. in order to prove the company’s racism to the public stephenson put

forward guy bailey for a vacany as a bus conductor. he was then denied an interview once the company realised bailey was black
inspired by the montgomery bus boycott they decided to do a bus boycott in bristol. they announced this plan at a press conference on 29th april 1963.

the boycott gained a lot of support and on the 28th august 1963 the company announced that there would no longer be anymore racial discrimination in their hiring process. Around a month later raghbir singh, a sikh, became bristol’s first non-white bus conductor. it has been 53

years since the boycott (the first picture, from left to right. guy bailey, roy hackett and paul stephenson) these three were given OBE’s for their action during the boycott

roberta cowell - born in london in 1918, roberta cowell was the first know british trans woman to undergo sex re-assignment surgery. she had shown an obsession with cars from a young age and became a racing car driver. she then joined the RAF as a pupil pilot in 1935 and then

served as a fighter pilot during ww2. in her autobiography (roberta cowell’s story) she talks about experiencing gender dysphoria and that after months psychoanalysis and tests she found out her unconscious mind was predominantly female. cowell then became friends with

micheal dillon the first trans man to get a phalloplasty (construction of a penis). in 1948 dillon performed an operation on cowell to remove her testicles, this surgery was illegal at the time. this allowed her to be recognised as intersex by a gynaecologist, this also allowed

her to have a new birth certificate issued in which her recorded sex was female. By 1950 cowell was taking oestrogen and on 15th may 1951 she had a vaginoplasty (construction of a vagina.) cowell died in 2011 aged 93.

i’m going to sleep now and i’ll update this later but please take some time going through this thread https://twitter.com/lizzaloves/status/1288085958118838272?s=21 https://twitter.com/lizzaloves/status/1288085958118838272