Len Garrison/Black Cultural Archives

I used to work in a youth club in Brixton in the 1960s, in the Railton Road. I led classes in Black history. In the Sixties, Black history had become an import which had an impact on Black people's culture, in terms of the afros and all that sort of thing. But what did not transfer very well was an understanding of the importance and the relevance of history. And an understanding of how that fit in with one's own being, one's own stuff.

I still have copies of African American materials which one drew on in these classes that I used to run. When dealing with the Black self in this country, there were no relevant materials that you could easily turn to. So one had to begin to collect materials and make materials which you could take in and say "This represents an historical period relating to ourselves". It was not validated because it was not published or printed materials. You could get whole sets of American things, curricular type materials which people had designed and so forth. But here, you had to be inventive.

I began collecting because I needed it. When I gave talks, around the issue of Rastafarians but more to do with my spiritual journey, to explain it, I needed to have things that I could say, "Here is what we are talking about". And I had this feeling that this history, things were passing us by, things were just being thrown away that everybody else thought was rubbish, but it had some value.