Black history
Our Black History collection includes letters and testimonies and research and exhibition material.
The position of black ex-servicemen, seamen and factory workers stranded or left destitute in Liverpool after the First World War is evidenced in the Correspondence Related to Repatriation and Race Riots collection (352 MAY).
It includes letters and testimony from soldiers and merchant seamen from Africa and the Caribbean, who had fought for England on land and at sea during the Great War of 1914, or had worked in factories to support the war effort. The documents reveal a plight of daily racism and loss of jobs because of the boycott by white workers, a boycott often supported by the trades unions.
Liverpool City Council Multiracial Promotions Library Unit contains research and exhibition material related to the Muslim community in Liverpool and also items from The Rialto Exhibition of June 1995, held in Toxteth Library, to mark rebuilding of the site of the Rialto cinema and ballroom in Upper Parliament destroyed in the 1981 Toxteth Riots (352 RAC).