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February 25 | Resistance in a Hostile Environment: Subnormal with Chichi Ayalogu

Time: 1PM

Location: KFPL Central Branch, 130 Johnson St.

In the 1960s, while young black adults were getting to grips with the struggle for black power and a long fightback against police abuse was starting, the majority of West Indian migrants in Britain were keeping their heads down. They were working hard and counting on providing better opportunities and education for their children. However, in a white-dominated country, where the politics were becoming increasingly racialised, there was a question of how society, and its teachers, saw these young black children. Before having a chance to develop intellectually, they were labelled as stupid, difficult and disruptive. This documentary reveals how black children in the 1960s and 70s were sent to schools for the subnormal, and how parents, activists and teachers came together to fight this injustice.

A screening of this documentary for school groups will be followed by a discussion with Black Studies Predoctoral Fellow Chichi Ayalogu whose dissertation 鈥淒iasporic Witnessing: Crises and the Aesthetics of the Nigerian Migratory Intelligentsia鈥� was awarded a SSHRC doctoral fellowship.