Black Teacher - FHALMA - Friends of the Huntley Archives at LMA

Beryl Gilroy, the pioneering writer, teacher and ethno-psychotherapist of the ‘Windrush generation’, was born in 1924 in British Guiana, where during her twenties she trained and worked as teacher, arriving in London in 1952. Initially, however, the prejudice and racism of her prospective employees prevented her from securing a teaching post. Today, Gilroy is well known as the first Black head teacher in London and for her contribution to multi-racial education. Before 1976, the year that Black Teacher was published, Gilroy wrote a series of children's readers largely due to her frustration with the racist teaching materials she found in her classroom cupboard. Arguably, Black Teacher was published for its contribution to 1970s debates on Britain's failure to provide relevant materials and methods for a culturally-fair education.