The IHR 2019 Wiley Lecture: 'Time Come' Britain's black futures past

In this lecture organised by the Institute of Historical Research, Dr Rob Waters will draw on the research for his new book Thinking Black: Britain, 1964–1985, to unpack the sense of impending change captured in Linton Kwesi Johnson’s 1974 poem, ‘Time Come’. He will explore how the demand to ‘think black’, so common in the languages of political blackness of the long 1970s, worked as a call to carve out new historical subjects. This was an era in which remembering the histories of slavery and colonialism became a common concern for black Britons. Waters will show how, for its advocates, ‘thinking black’ meant working to remember these as unfinished histories that would be the driving force of change for Britain, the material out of which new futures would be made. After the lecture, Rob Waters will be joined in conversation with Dr Kennetta Hammond Perry (De Montfort University).