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#BlackHistoryMonthUK I so appreciate the love you all are giving my old lady. So as a special treat let's delve into the family album of the late great Angela Johnson - a thread.
Born in Trinidad in 1942 she was the last child of George Arthur Roberts's eldest child, daughter Stella - that's Angela sitting on the little stool in this picture with her four siblings
As her father was Indian she was known by the derogatory term of dougla - a half Indian half African girl. She became known in her village in the south of Trinidad as a great beauty. She seemed to spend much of her youth sending her photo to various adoring boyfriends!
In 1960 she decided to leave Trinidad aged only 18 to come to London to train as a nurse. Here she is on her last day in Port of Spain. She made sure she was well dressed in that black and gold dress but no wonder she was cold on her arrival at Southampton! Brrr!
Here she is again on her last day saying goodbye to her brothers. Her eldest brother Vandeburgh, on her right, told me that despite being the youngest she was the first to leave and the whole family was in tears. Typical of courageous Angela.
My dad, the son of a policeman arrived in London in 1961 to work for London Transport as an underground guard at Tufnell Park. Angela vaguely knew him from home and soon was pregnant. She was kicked out of her nursing home, as being unmarried with a baby was forbidden. She was 19
So there the young parents were - 4000 miles from home with nowhere to live (no blacks, no dogs, no children). It was the fledgling actor Oscar James who stepped in to share his accommodation with them in Islington.
Meanwhile in Trinidad my grandmother was mortified when my mother fell pregnant again. She insisted she marry. I once asked my mother what that shed was behind my gran (right) and she indignantly answered:"That was our home!" These were our dirt poor beginnings.
With now two children she struggled to pass her state final exam, failing 5 times. Eventually she was admitted to the nursing register as an RMN in 1967 taking up a job in the Whittington and then in the old Friern Barnet hospital, now luxury flats.
That same year she succumbed to her mother's pleas to marry and finally tied the knot. Oscar recently said he always remembered my mother's lovely smile.
But the marriage was abusive and when my mum finally started to hit back my dad fled, leaving her with three kids and one on the way. She was to struggle on alone for 17 years and that's when she had to give up nursing to become a bus conductress so she could feed us all.
Then in 1984 on holiday in Trinidad she bumped into an old boyfriend she had lost contact with, the politician William Johnson (on the left) a member of Port of Spain city council and a ruling party darling. He later told me he had fallen in love with my mother when she was 11!
Johnson fell in love again and without warning gave up his political career, marriage and life to come to London and start a new life with his old flame. Within two years Angela had given birth to her fifth and last daughter, Karla, at the age of 44.
A year later they married but Johnson was not a well man. He had had longstanding diabetes and the complications caught up with him. Within 3 years of this wedding in London, Johnson had died, aged 54, leaving Angela struggling alone again with her little girl.
Despite these hardships life was good. After all she had been through we nominated my mum for this award just for being a great mum. She was considering a new career in accountancy (she was a brilliant mathematician) when she found a lump at her left armpit.
She had had a mammogram and so dismissed it but it turned out to be breast cancer. And despite mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormonal therapy she died in February 1995 a month after her 53rd birthday.
She never lived to see her first grandchild, the lovely Perry, or her daughter reach adulthood, her two final wishes. I could think of only one thing to put on her headstone, this glorious quote by the poet Aimé Cesaire. May she rest in peace.
So when I talk of our great queens and the living history we pay tribute to in #BlackHistoryMonthUK we have to think of our mothers, Angela, Stella and my great grandmother Delcina. The queens who came from nothing and made us what we are today. I hope you enjoyed this thread.
