In Black History Month 2025, WoW’s regular contributor, Liverpool 8’s own Professor Stephen Small, will be sharing insights from his forthcoming book, Black Liverpool is the Real Thing: West African, West Indian and Afro-American Culture at the end of the Twentieth-Century (title confirmation pending) – a detailed study of Black culture in Liverpool in the final decades of the 20th century.
Stephen documents how residents and organisations in the L8 Black community embraced and transformed cultural patterns from across Africa and the diaspora to meet their needs. He describes soul, reggae and African music and nightclubs, Black nationalist ideologies, Rastafarian activities, and Black Studies courses. And he details the many visitors that came to Liverpool from Africa and the diaspora, as well as the many L8 residents that visited Africa and the diaspora. The experiences of Black women and Black women’s organisations are closely examined and illustrated.
Black Liverpool is the Real Thing offers an antidote to the dominance of a London-based story of Black Britain in this period and highlights the unique history of Black Liverpool. A key feature of the book are details of the salience of African cultural patterns in Liverpool, revealed in African family names, the largest concentration of African clubs in the nation, and the emergence of African-inspired organisations like Delado African Drum and Dance company, Elimu Wa Nane library, Steve Biko Housing Association, and Amadudu women’s refuge.
Black Liverpool is the Real Thing: West African, West Indian and Afro-American Culture at the end of the Twentieth-Century and will be published by Liverpool University Press in 2026. It will be the first book based on extensive research with L8 residents and organisations to describe Black culture in this period.
Stephen has dedicated this latest series of Smalltalk to Dr. Ray Costello – the foremost historian of Black Liverpool.
Read the first series of Smalltalk here.