Louise Da-Cocodia: Last News

From Arthur Lewis, the Nobel prize-winning economist, to the ordinary people who Quaker abolitionist Thomas Clarkson spotted in the crowd at the first-ever anti-slavery public meeting, back in 1787 at Manchester Cathedral, black Mancunians have made history.October each year is Black History Month, a time when a light is shone on the contributions of those whose stories have been neglected by history, because of the colour of their skin.  In previous years, the M.E.N. has looked at the lives of people like Len Johnson, the Clayton-born boxer and political activist who attended the Fifth Pan-African Conference, which would shape the independence movements of the last century, Louise Da-Cocodia, the nurse and campaigner who fought for the

death of George Floyd, with the same spirit that made the ‘Working-Men of Manchester’ resolve to refuse to touch cotton produced by the slavery of the American south, on the same day they wrote that letter to Lincoln.There’s much more to today’s event than solidarity.Every black person in that crowd will have had some experience of being stereotyped, scapegoated, insulted, even attacked, because of the colour of their skin, will have experience of people who don’t know what it’s like, or don’t want to know it’s like, telling them it’s all in their head.The demonstrators follow in the footsteps of 20th century civil rights activists like Louise Da-Cocodia, Len Johnson and Learie Constantine and C.L.R James  - proud Mancunians and