Video From BBC Program Highlights Black Family Research In England

'Black Edwardians' / Edwardian Family Album (BBC4) from George Pagliero on Vimeo.

This is an interesting clip showing one man, Stacy Graham's search for information about his grandfather in London, England. His grandfather, Sidney Graham, who came from Barbados around 1914 and his family has lived in the same area of London ever since. The clip is from an interesting family history program that was aired on the BBC called "The Edwardian Family Album."

I especially liked the advice from the archivist, Jennie Monroe-Collins, who said "You should look even if you don't believe you will find anything. No one is anonymous ~ even if they wanted to be." The program takes it's cue from Jeffrey Green's excellent book Black Edwardians, available from Amazon.com, that reveals a long history of a Black presence in England.

The author uses contemporary records such as newspapers, photographs and memoirs of the time, as well as family papers to challenge the conventional views of Britain's social history on the period.