Mary Evans collection of the week: The The British Caribbean History Collection

The centrepiece of the British Caribbean History Collection is a wonderful set of photographs by Esmel May Woma. Taken in the 1960s, when Esmel arrived in Nottingham from the Caribbean to study to be a nurse, the images show her friends and colleagues enjoying their free time: dancing, dining and sightseeing. Taken with a small Kodak camera which Esmel purchased on her arrival, many of the photos have a feeling of relaxed spontaneity and capture the relationship between the Afro-Caribbean people and their white British hosts in an intimate chronicle of this rapidly-changing time.

The wider collection also features the lives of a British Caribbean family in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, in Britain and overseas on travels in Oman, Hong Kong, Egypt, and Jamaica.

You can browse the full set of photographs here.

Mary Evans Picture Library newsletter – 7 December, 2021.

Picture credit: A gathering of men and women from Nottingham’s diverse communities at the British Consulate in Nottingham, 1960s©The British Caribbean History Collection / Mary Evans