Black Victorians

While numerically insignificant, the existence of Black Bristolians is important to document, as they bridge the gap between what we know about the black presence in the city when it was a slaving port and when it was the destination of 20th-century migrants from the Caribbean and West Africa.

Although a number of visiting African-American anti-slavery campaigners such as Frederick Douglass and Ellen Crafts were lionised when they visited the city and Black entertainers were also accorded a genuinely warm, if patronising, welcome, those who lived permanently in Bristol seem generally to have been poor and of low status.