New information
Here we have collected additional information about Black lives in the North East.
Mary Ann Macham arrived in North Shields in 1831, after escaping slavery in Virginia. She was welcomed by the Miss Spences, a prominent Quaker family, working in their household until her marriage to a local rope-maker. She died in 1893, and has recently been commemorated with a memorial stone in Preston Cemetery, Tynemouth.
Information and Pictures courtesy of Low Light Museum, North Shields
Mary Ann Macham
The tombstone and epitaph of Mary Ann Blythe (neé Macham)
Mary Ann Macham
Activist, MBE and community leader, Charles Udor Minto was a tireless campaigner who created safe spaces for North Tyneside's burgeoning black community in the 1930s and 40s.
A champion boxer in Nigeria, his career as a seaman brought him to North Shields where he continued fighting - this time on a political stage.
Video, Information and Pictures courtesy of Davey Young, Heritology Society, North Shields, TWAM and Imperial War Museum IWM D10714
Charles Udor Minto
Minto in the kitchen of Colonial House, North Shields
Minto’s wife, Mary J. Clarke (left), who was instrumental in hosting events at Colonial House
Olympic sprinter, medical student and later musician John Edward London (1876- 1966), better known as Jack London, won both silver and bronze medals for Britain in the 1928 Olympic Games.
Born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana) on 13th January 1905, Jack was described as a superb athelete and was the first British sprinter to utilise starting blocks. His childhood home was at Lily Crescent inJesmond, Newcastle, where a plaque devoted to him now stands.
Jack London
Jack at the 1928 Olympics
Plaque to Jack London erected on 6th August 2024