Sam Morris (anticolonialist)

Samson 'Sam' Uriah Morris (1908-1976) was a Grenada born educationalist, anti-colonialist and civil rights activist who came to London in 1939, becoming deputy chair for the Commission for Racial Equality in the 1970s.[1]

Biography

Morris was born in St Andrews, Grenada in 1908 and received part of his education in Barbados at Corginton College. In 1939, he sailed to the United Kingdom, served in the British Army for two and a half years, and then became active in the League of Coloured Peoples, formed by Harold Moody which was concerned with racial equality and civil rights in Britain and elsewhere in the world, becoming general secretary of the organisation in 1945. He participated in several BBC programmes including Calling the West Indies and Caribbean Voices.

He was a Liaison Officer to Learie Constantine in the Welfare Department of the Colonial Office during the Second World War. In 1953 he left Britain for Africa and worked on Radio Ghana before becoming a private secretary and press officer to Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana for eight years, returning in 1967. He was then the Development Officer for the Midlands with the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants.[2] He later became Assistant High Commissioner for Grenada and deputy chair for the Commission for Racial Equality. He lived in Hammersmith and was an active member of the Hammersmith and Fulham Council for Racial Equality. He died in June 1976 in Fulham, London.

Selected Writings

'My Tribute to the Late George Padmore,' Accra Evening News, 3 October 1959.

'Tribute to Learie Constantine', New Community, 1, 1 (October 1971), pp68–70

'Moody—the forgotten visionary', New Community (Vol. 1, No. 3, Spring 1972), pp. 193–6

The case and the course: A treatise on Black Studies (London: Committee on Black Studies 1973)

Legacy

There is a Sam Uriah Morris Society which had a centre in East London with an exhibition about black history.[3]

References

  1. ↑ Petra Pryke, YT? Youth Training in the visual arts: The Sam Morris Project, in Patricia Potts, Felicity Armstrong and Mary Masterton (eds.) Equality and Diversity in Education vol. 1, Learning, Teaching and Managing in Schools. Routledge, 1995, p. 153.
  2. ↑ Pendennis. "Who’s who in race", The Observer, London, 3 March 1968.
  3. ↑ Sam Uriah Morris Society. Hackney Council website. Accessed 31.03.14.

External links