Just a quick note on a project I’m working on at the minute. With the help of Vincent Hiribarren, I am hoping to develop and interactive map that will document the journey of the ANC activist Alfred ‘Tough’ Hutchinson out of South Africa and into exile in 1958. Hutchinson escaped apartheid South Africa whilst on trial for treason, a crime that carried the death penalty, and headed to newly independent Ghana to attend Kwame Nkrumah’s All-African People’s Conference. Alfred told this story in his 1960 book ‘Road to Ghana’.
Through this online resource I will aim to tell this important story, one which is of central importance to the history of the international anti-apartheid movement, in Leeds as part of Black History Month this coming October. Mapping Hutchinson’s journey throughout the African continent would also provide the presentational basis for workshops that I will run for the general public. As well as providing details of Hutchinson and others who faced white supremacy in South Africa, these sessions will examine the global dimension of the anti-apartheid in the UK and further afield.
As part of this project I’m hoping to interview Hazel Hutchinson, who met Alfred whilst teaching in South Africa. Hazel and Alfred were married in Ghana in 1959, later travelling to England together to live in London. I’m planning to visit Hazel at the end of the month and will use this information to get a better idea of the political and racial forces that shaped their relationship.
Any comments on this project would be greatly appreciated. I will post more on this over the coming months. For more information see nicholasgrant.co.uk
perspectivesonafrica 