The article, “Race, Archival Silences, and a Black Footballer Between the Wars”, by Martin Johnes explores the life of Welsh footballer Eddie Parris in order to investigate the working-class black experience in interwar Britain. Black society in the 1920s and 1930s remained subject to racism. As well as the divide between whites and blacks based on racism there was also a divide within black society based on cultural and class differences as students and professional black people were held in higher regard than British born black people in the ports and in London. Nonetheless the interwar period was populated with increasing black political and imperial involvement where racism was a unifying force across class and ethnic backgrounds unlike anything Britain had seen before. In this article, Johnes uses a range of primary and secondary sources to highlight how within the existing historiographical discourse, the individual experiences of black Britons can often be lost within the overarching emphasis on black-white relations and reactions of racists. This is really potent for this week’s material of Inter-war society and politics as it takes a look at black experiences within this specific time in British history through a deeper, more interpersonal lens. We are encouraged through his work, to remember that the research and information studied is based on black individuals’ real-life experiences which Johnes argues should not be ignored or overlooked.
By focusing in on a single individual, Johnes article is unique, sparking interesting insights into the study of race. In his work he refers to several historians, for instance, when addressing Historian Bressey’s ‘absence of colour’ in archives findings and analysis, Johnes identifies that primary archives were often white washed and ignorant to the real experiences of black people in Britain. When describing Parris’s early life Johnes makes a point of describing how Eddie grew up within a turbulent time for race relations in Britain, living in Newport at the time of the race riots of 1919. Johnes suggests this may have had a great impact on the Parris family considering Eddie’s mother was a white British women married to a black solider at the time concerns over the genetic effects of miscegenation fuelled mass riot. Johnes goes on to suggest that even though the racist hatred and violence had significantly reduced by the interwar years, racial equality was not a widely adopted idea. Johnes also explores the idea that British culture was inherently racist which is a concept explored widely within the historical discourse usually argued to be derived from the broad process of imperialism due to how it traditionally placed the white race as superior to the other races of the British Empire.
Overall, Johnes presents the overarching idea that although Parris’s relationship with football, which would have brought him into the public eye, highlights a step forward in regard of racial prejudice but condemns that his life and career were not free of race. On the whole, this article is convincing as it is raw and shows how individual experiences throughout history can be applied to a wide topic base to bring light to important information that would have otherwise been missed.
Dear Lindsay, You show a good understanidng of the rationale behind Johnes‘s article. You consider the methodology that Johnes has used in order to use a case study to consider the much broader picture of black people’s lives in the inter war era. You could say that the link to the Newport riot is circumstantial since there is no evidence provided that Parris’s family was caught up in the events. You mention the difficulty tracing ‘ordinary’ black people in archives that Johnes discusses and refer to his use of secondary sources, such as Bressey’s article on the black working class which used newspaper job adverts, but do not say much about what Johnes found out about Parris and his professional footballer career. You show how this article fits in with this week’s topic very well.