Kathleen Wrasama

Kathleen Wrasama (her name sometimes given as Kathleen Warsama) was an Ethiopian-born British community organiser. As a child she moved to England and became a founding member of the Stepney Coloured Peoples Association, an organisation working to improve community relations, education and housing for black people.[1] In 2018 she was cited by The Voice newspaper as one of eight black women – alongside Olive Morris, Connie Mark, Fanny Eaton, Diane Abbott, Lilian Bader, Margaret Busby and Mary Seacole – who have contributed to changing British history,[1] although there has been little documentation of her life.[2]

Biography

Wrasama was brought to England as a child in 1917 by church missionaries.[1][3] The experiences she suffered living in a children's home in Yorkshire caused her to run away, and she subsequently found work as a farm labourer.[4] Moving to London in the 1930s, she worked as an extra in Paul Robeson films.[4] She and her husband later established a Somali seaman's mission in Stepney, and in the 1950s she was a founding member of the Stepney Coloured People's Association, which was committed to improving community relations, as well as education and housing for black people.[1] She told of her life in London's East End in an interview for the 1982 BBC documentary Surviving: Experience of Migration and Exile,[5] and was later invited to visit a school, where she spoke about her early years and her experiences of racism.[6]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Leah Sinclair, "Suffrage 100: The Black Women Who Changed British History", The Voice, 6 February 2018.
  2. ^ Paula Akpan, "Meet Varaidzo, the woman using Instagram to teach Black British history", Metro, 31 October 2018.
  3. ^ "Kathleen Wrasama: Black British Women Activists Talk", Numbi, 30 August 2018.
  4. ^ a b "Kathleen Wrasama", Black Cultural Archives, 1980.
  5. ^ "An exploration of Somali life on screen: Pan African Cinema". Events for 1 August 2019, Numbi.
  6. ^ Celia Burgess-Macey, "Tackling racism and sexism in the primary classroom", in Dawn Gill, Barbara Mayor, Maud Blair (eds), Racism and Education: Structures and Strategies, Sage, 1992, pp. 279–80.