There are so many leaders of color today who have set out on successful career and life journeys and owe much of their success to the groundwork laid by innovators and trailblazers before them. As we continue to celebrate Black History Month, here’s a snapshot of global innovators and influencers of the diaspora from the past who have made great strides in their industries, and the members of the international new school now carrying the torch.
[Related: Black History at Home and Abroad: 13 Leaders Whose Impact Went Global]
THEN: CLAUDE MCKAY was a Jamaican-American writer and poet and a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance. The author of four novels including Home to Harlem, which was a best-seller that won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, his 1922 poetry collection, Harlem Shadows, was among the first books published during the Harlem Renaissance. In 1977, Jamaica named Claude McKay the national poet and posthumously awarded him the Order of Jamaica, a high honor, for his contribution to literature.
NOW: MARLON JAMES is a Jamaican-born writer who has published three novels and has been named as “part of a renaissance of Jamaican writing.” One of his books, A Brief History of Seven Killings, was winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize, an esteemed international honor awarded each year for the best original novel written in the English language, and published in the UK.
THEN: JAMES BARNOR is a pioneering Ghanaian photographer based in London. With a career spanning six decades, his street and studio photography represents themes of communities in transition, depicting Ghana moving toward independence, and London becoming a multicultural metropolis. He has been lauded as a leader in showcasing 20th century artistic expression of African life and one of the preeminent storytellers of modern African life, particularly in Ghana and the UK experience of Africans of the diaspora that could compare to the works of African American photography icon Gordon Parks.
NOW: ADRIEN VICTOR SAUVAGE is a British fashion designer, director, photographer, and second-generation Ghanaian. As a teen, he played professional basketball, before retiring at age 19, deciding to transition into the world of art and fashion. Founder of Untitled Muse, he has worked with celebrities and top brands including Dr. Martens, London’s Café Royal, Jude Law, Noomi Rapace, Dwyane Wade, Terry Gilliam and Mos Def. His photography collection, “This Is Not A Suit,” featured “Captains and Natives,” exploring life in Venice Beach, California, and Ghana. The series, which has been featured by U.S media companies including Esquire, Vogue, and Style.com, was described by GQ as a campaign “which challenges our notions of what it means to wear the standard uniform of men everywhere…” Since launching the photo series, Sauvage raised his profile as a reputable photographer, raised the profile of several young models including Edie Campbell.
THEN: WANGARI MAATHAI She is Africa’s first female Nobel Peace Prize winner, having received the honor after becoming the first East African woman to hold a doctorate at age 70 and spending her life fighting against inequality for women and environmental exploitation of Kenya. She once was a classmate of President Barack Obama’s father as one of 300 Kenyan students given scholarships in the U.S. in 1960. In 1977, she rallied village women to plant trees to prevent deforestation and provide them their communities with fuel.
As an activist, she was beaten and jailed for protests against President Daniel Arap Moi’s government, including its plans to build a 60-story government building in Uhuru Park in Nairobi, and she was successful in rallying support, later winning a seat as an MP after getting a majority vote. She was also a staunch opponent of what she saw as the country’s selling off of its natural resources to fund infrastructure, and in 2006, she helped found the Nobel Women’s Initiative to push for peace, justice, and equality around the world.
NOW: WINNIE ASITI Winnie Asiti, a member of Global Greengrants’ Next Generation Climate Board, is a climate activist from Kenya. “I drew my inspiration from a lot of things. I joined the university environment club–through that I got to interact with other like-minded young people. In 2006, climate change negotiations were being hosted by Kenya, and we all got an opportunity as university students to go to the meetings as volunteers and as observers. We got interested in climate change negotiations and climate change work,†Asiti said in a recent interview.
She has served as a volunteer at the African Youth Initiative on Climate Change, helping to plan marches, plant trees, organize conferences, attended various forums, and written about the climate and environmental issue of her country as well as Africa as a whole, citing how the challenges of global warming and infrastructure developments have affected women, children and families in rural areas. She has also served as a fellow of the African Centre for Technology Studies, and has been lauded by environmental colleagues as “the next generation of environmental leaders.”
THEN: FRANK CRICHLOW Born in Trinidad and raised in the U.K, Crichlow was a British community leader, entrepreneur, and activist during London’s civil rights movement of the 1960s and ’70s. His first restaurant El Rio Cafe served as a gathering place and resource for support and fellowship for newly arriving immigrants of color to London. He would go on to open the Mangrove, a restaurant and lounge that catered to celebrities including Richard Neville, Jimi Hendrix, the Four Tops, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Sarah Vaughan, Sammy Davis Jr, and Diana Ross and the Supremes. He experienced police harassment and after protesting his mistreatment and what he thought to be systemic racism, he and eight others were arrested for “riot and affray” in 1970.
The aftermath of the arrest led to a highly publicized trial that lasted for 55 days the next year which exposed racism in Britain against blacks at the
hand of law enforcement. Deemed “The “Mangrove Nine,” all protesters were acquitted. “It was a turning point for black people,” Crichlow said in an interview. “It put on trial the attitudes of the police, the Home Office, of everyone towards the black community.” He set up the Mangrove Community Association which provided advice and assistance to immigrants of color and launched projects to improve housing, establish youth facilities and services for the elderly, and help rehabilitate ex-offenders and drug and alcohol addicts. He also served as a central figure in the development of the Notting Hill Carnival which celebrates the culture of Afro Caribbeans and is the largest street festival in Europe.NOW: IKAMARA LARASI Larasi is a black feminist, writer, and community organizer based in the U.K. She recently launched the Rewind & Reframe campaign which created media buzz on social as well as in the U.K news, conducting focus groups with women in their teens and 20s to explore the good and bad of the imagery in popular music videos. The campaign called for better sex education, media literacy courses, and age ratings on music videos. It also created dialogue about Miley Cyrus’ 2013 performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, the depiction of black women in Lily Allen’s video for “Hard Out Here,” and included a protest against “Blurred Lines,” which was, Larasi told The Guardian, based on the fact that “there isn’t a clear understanding in society of consent, and how to treat women.”
A key figure at Imkaan, a black feminist organization “dedicated to addressing violence against women and girls,” Larasi works to ensure that the young female perspective is represented in conversations about violence against women and girls. As an advocate for women’s rights, she’s been a featured speaker at the International Women’s Day Million Women Rise March in London which called for an end to violence against women in the U.K., and the Women Of The World festival
which celebrates the accomplishments of women and girls and is broadcast internationally via the BBC. She also serves as a member of the Black Feminists and has written insights on feminism and the images of black women in pop culture for publications including The Guardian.
THEN: BARBARA BLAKE HANNAH A native of Jamaica, Hannah is a journalist, author, broadcaster and filmmaker known as the first black person to appear on British news TV in a non-entertainment role. A former independent senator in the Jamaican Parliament from 1984 to 1987, Hannah worked in the U.K interviewing celebrities and public figures including Prime Minister Harold Wilson and film star Michael Caine, and went on to work for ATV-Birmingham’s Today Show as well as the BBC’s Man Alive series.
She was also the public relations director for Jamaica’s first feature film, The Harder They Come, a cult classic starring music star Jimmy Cliff. She’s created eight films and founded the Jamaica Film Academy after relocating from the U.K. to the island in the 1970s.Â
NOW: MO ABUDU
Mo Abudu, described by Forbes as “Africa’s Most Successful Woman,” is a Nigerian media entrepreneur and talk show host and founder of Ebony Life TV, an African multi-broadcast entertainment network. Born in Nigeria but raised and educated in the U.K, she worked in human resources and recruitment before venturing to start her own news and lifestyle show, Moments with Mo, the first syndicated daily talk show on African regional television. Its past guests are a who’s who of international politics, business, healthcare and more, with now-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton among those guests who have been interviewed on her show. She also executive produced and created of The Debaters, a reality TV show featuring orators and Fifty, a film which sold out in London during its October premier there last year and was well-received by audiences in Africa and Europe thereafter.