Kathleen Wrasama

Kathleen Wrasama (her name sometimes given as Kathleen Warsama) was an Ethiopian-born British community organiser. As a child she moved to England and became a founding member of the Stepney Coloured Peoples Association, an organisation working to improve community relations, education and housing for black people.^[1] In 2018 she was cited by The Voice newspaper as one of eight black women – alongside Olive Morris, Connie Mark, Fanny Eaton, Diane Abbott, Lilian Bader, Margaret Busby and Mary Seacole – who have contributed to changing British history,^[1] although there has been little documentation of her life.^[2]

Biography

Wrasama was brought to England as a child in 1917 by church missionaries.^[1][3] The experiences she suffered living in a children's home in Yorkshire caused her to run away, and she subsequently found work as a farm labourer.^[4] Moving to London in the 1930s, she worked as an extra in Paul Robeson films.^[4] She and her husband later established a Somali seaman's mission in Stepney, and in the 1950s she was a founding member of the Stepney Coloured People's Association, which was committed to improving community relations, as well as education and housing for black people.^[1] She told of her life in London's East End in an interview for the 1982 BBC documentary Surviving: Experience of Migration and Exile,^[5] and was later invited to visit a school, where she spoke about her early years and her experiences of racism.^[6]

References

This page was last edited on 29 May 2023, at 04:28