‘I remember the exhilaration of the crowd and chanting’: artist Steve McQueen on his experience of resistance and protest
For the artist and film director acts of protest were as much a part of growing up as playing in the local park. Here he recalls his first encounters with activism
My first encounter with resistance was unbeknownst to me, and I was annoyed by it. At nine years old, I found myself attending Saturday school, missing Football Focus and not being with my friends playing in the local park. First my sister and I went to the Marcus Garvey Saturday school in Hammersmith. Later we went to the Saturday school in Acton, organised by Mr Carter. He was a light-skinned Black man with slightly ginger hair and freckles, bearing a strange resemblance to Jimmy Carter, who was the president of the United States.
The sole purpose of the Saturday school was to help Black children who were underachieving or being failed by the education system. At that time, I didn’t know that these facilities were organised throughout the United Kingdom by Black parents, teachers and academics. In 1971, a London schoolteacher, Bernard Coard, wrote a pamphlet called How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Subnormal in the British School System: The Scandal of the Black Child in Schools in Britain. Although there had been efforts to support Black children prior to this, this was the launching pad for a nationwide and organised act of self-determination.
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