Windrush: Birmingham charity founder speaks of early years in UK

A local champion continues to serve her community more than 40 years after starting her charity.

Eunice McGhie-Belgrave left her home in St James' Parish in Jamaica in 1957 and set sail for Britain as part of the Windrush generation.

She went on to help set up Shades of Black, a charity which helped restore calm to her community following the Handsworth riots in Birmingham.

Now aged 89, she has no intention of stopping and remains the chair.

She is one of 500,000 people who left their homes in the Caribbean to help rebuild Britain after it had been ravaged by World War Two, now know as the Windrush Generation.

At the age of 22, she crossed the seas to join her husband-to-be, a former RAF soldier.

When she arrived in her new home, the cheery welcome she was expecting turned out to be as frosty as the snow that covered the roofs during the unfamiliar winter.

"The people were not nice. I expected a much more liberal society because when I was in Jamaica, at school, we read about the streets of England being paved with gold," she said.

"This man came up to me and demanded I give him my passport.

"Another time, I was grocery shopping and the shopkeeper threw the change on to the counter so he wouldn't have to touch my hand.

"Each time something like this happened, I just held on to the advice my grandmother gave me before I left Jamaica - to take the high road."

At the time, the soon-to-be Mrs McGhie-Belgrave lived in Handsworth and secured her first job in the UK as a mental health nurse.

The mother-of-four remembered: "Rooms were divided by a curtain, not woodwork or brick, you lived on one side of the room and a stranger in the other half.

"There was no privacy."

As she settled into her new community, civil unrest and racial tensions flared around her.

In September 1985, Handsworth was devastated by two days of violent rioting following the arrest of a black man after a police stop and search.

Determined to try to help heal the wounds in the community, she alongside four other women came together to launch the Shades of Black charity.

The group helped provide support to senior neighbours as well as develop social and educational workshops to inspire young people.

Four decades on, Mrs McGhie-Belgrave remains a pillar of the community. She became an MBE in 2001.

On the legacy of the Windrush Generation as the nation celebrates 75 years since Empire Windrush docked in Essex, the community champion added: "We came and helped to restore and to maintain the country and we continue to do and our children continue to do so."

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