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An exhibition honouring this important, but largely forgotten black British activist opens this month. Janelle Oswald looks at the life of a ‘radical sister’.

IF YOU have not shopped in Brixton lately you may be unaware of the new local ‘currency’ circulating in the south London neighbourhood.

Launched as a business initiative to encourage residents to ‘buy local’, the ‘Brixton pound’ notes feature a range of local historical figures. On the one pound note, the young black woman holding a megaphone to her mouth is one of Brixton’s lesser-known community figures, Olive Morris.

Born in Jamaica in 1952, Morris moved with her family to Britain at nine, and went on to become a passionate and committed community organiser and activist.

As a tireless campaigner for black women, a socialist and an internationalist, Morris dedicated herself to fighting injustice wherever she saw it and is seen as yet another of the great unsung heroes in black British history.

Despite falling victim to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (a type of cancer) at the young age of 27, Morris lived a full and active life, campaigning tirelessly and organising anti-racist and anti-imperialist campaigns, and working for the rights of women in Brixton and Manchester, where she completed a degree in Social Sciences during the late ‘60s and throughout the ‘70s.

Morris’ university degree was a testament to her tenacity and determination to succeed in life, even though she left school without any qualifications.

During her three years at Manchester University, Morris joined a group of Marxist students and eventually travelled to China, which inspired her to set up the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD).

An example of Morris’ courage and no-nonsense character was when she objected to the arrest of a Nigerian diplomat who was detained in Brixton as he stepped out of his Mercedes in 1969.

As a people gathered to watch as the police began to beat the innocent Nigerian, a 17-year-old Morris ran through the crowd and physically tried to stop the attack.

The police officers reportedly pushed Morris to the ground and subjected her to what many claim was a severe beating. It is alleged that during the beating, police said: "This is the right colour for your body."

In a tribute after Morris’ death in 1979, one Nigerian student wrote: ‘It is reasonable to expect that Olive Morris' heroism will be immortalised alongside such black luminaries like Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X and many others who were proud to be black’.

Before her early death, Morris co-founded and worked with various organizations – the Brixton Black Women’s Group, the Manchester Black Women’s Co-operative, the Manchester Black Women’s Mutual Aide Group and the Brixton Law Centre.

Inspired by the Black Panthers who fought for equal rights of African-Americans, Morris was also active in the Brixton Black Panther movement. She was also a pivotal force in the squatters' rights campaigns of the ‘70s, often taking direct action against social injustices, which led to a number of police arrests.

A famous image is of the feisty heroine standing in the streets of Brixton, barefoot, holding a placard that read: ‘Black sufferer fight police pig brutality’.

On March 14, 1986, a plaque and photograph of Olive Morris was unveiled by her mother, Doris, to mark the naming of Lambeth Council’s building at 18 Brixton Hill as Olive Morris House.

The naming of the building was proposed at a time when the council was run by a progressive group of politicians, who in response to community campaigning renamed several buildings, streets and public places after black leaders. In addition to Olive Morris House, in this period Marcus Garvey Way and Bob Marley Way were also named.

Lambeth Council’s decision to name one of its most important buildings Olive Morris House honours the contribution of this courageous and inspiring young woman. ??The building is home to the council's finance and resources department.

In 2007, the ground floor of Olive Morris House became a state-of-the-art customer centre, serving 10,000 Lambeth residents on an average weekly basis. ?

Morris' work was recently documented through the Olive Morris Collection at Lambeth Archives. The collection was launched last month at Brixton Library as part of Black History Month and comprises of oral interviews with those who knew Morris and other personal materials.

The collection is the result of the ongoing ‘Do You Remember Olive Morris?’ project led by the Remembering Olive Collective (ROC).

* The 'Do you remember Olive Morris?' exhibition will be run from November 25 until 24 January, 2010, at Gasworks, 155 Vauxhall St. Admission is free.

Published: 11 November 2009
Issue: 1397

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