4th October 2026 

Why Black History Month?

A little while ago, while I was running a session with a group of children aged 7-11, I showed them a picture of a Black Jesus. "OK," said one of them, aged 9, "but that's not the real Jesus. The real Jesus has blond hair." "Yes," agreed the other children. The "real Jesus" looks like a European, with blond hair and blue eyes. All of these children were from GMH backgrounds. If the "real Jesus" has blond hair and blue eyes, what might that be saying to these children? Representation matters.

One of the claims to fame of our St John's site is that, in 1865, two years before his death, the renowned Shakespearean actor, Ira Aldridge, was married there. In his lifetime, Ira Aldridge was honoured with prestigious international awards, including the Prussian Gold Medal for Arts and Sciences and the Golden Cross of Leopold from Russia. He has a bronze plaque at Stratford-upon-Avon,and, just as importantly, is celebrated as in the picture above by a pavement plaque in Penge. He played roles including Othello, King Lear and Macbeth on the London stage and toured extensively in Europe. He also happened to be Black. In 1828, he became the first Black manager of any British theatre, and used the platform from his growing fame to campaign against enslavement.

Being the first is always difficult. We can only imagine the racism and discrimination Aldridge must have endured, although Google does confirm that he was forced to emigrate to the UK from his native USA at the age of just 17 because of intense racial discrimination and limited opportunities back home. But that was then, wasn't it? Now, our screens are filled with a diverse range of actors. Some commentators have suggested that discrimination is now working the other way. 

And yet, only this summer, the casting of actor Lupita Nyong'o as Helen (and simultaneously Helen's twin sister, Clytemnestra) in Christopher Nolan's film "The Odyssey" provoked a social media storm. People were horrified that a Black actress should play the role of Helen of Troy - even though, as Nyong'o herself points out, it's a mythical story. We don't know what any of the characters look like in this story, although, given its location around the Greek and Turkish Mediterrranean, we can be fairly sure that none of them were blond. How is it possible that in 2026, the casting of a Black actor in a film provokes controversy? The shocking truth is that, had Lupita Nyong'o been blond haired and blue eyed, there would have been no controversy. She would have been seen as "the real Helen".

Nearly 200 years after Ira Aldridge became the first Black manager of any British theatre, this summer's media storm shows that it's still more difficult to be a Black actor than a white one. And those of us who are white need to acknowledge that this is largely due to (possibly unconscious) biases on our part. We need Black History Month to help our children understand that "the real Jesus" does not have blond hair and blue eyes. We need Black History Month to remind us that we have much to do to banish racism from our culture. And we need Black History Month to remind us of that humanity which, in our rich and glorious diversity, we all share - "God created humankind in his own image." (Genesis 1:27)