He was the first black boss of a UK record label. She was a British Black Panther and one of the Mangrove Nine. They reflect on the ‘madness’ of his childhood, his father the activist and author, and his memoir that records their groundbreaking legacies
In the expansive basement of his house in an exclusive neighbourhood of Chiswick in west London, Darcus Beese, 55, is sipping a cappuccino below a large framed press photograph, which provides an illuminating glimpse of his singular childhood. It shows him, aged 11, alongside his late father, the renowned Trinidadian-born British activist Darcus Howe, and several others, at the Black People’s Day of Action, which took place in London in March 1981. “That’s me in the hat,” he says, pointing to his baby-faced younger self sitting alongside his older brother.
In a related photograph, taken in 1976, when he was just six years old, he is holding hands with his mother, Barbara Beese (now 78), another prominent black activist of the time, who is sporting an Angela Davis-style afro. They are in the frontline of an anti-racist march in support of Brick Lane’s Bengali community. He looks happy and excited. “It’s what I knew as a kid and I just assumed it was normal,” he tells me, laughing.
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