Amelia King

Amelia King (1917–1995) was a British woman who was refused entry into the Women's Land Army, during World War II, because she was black. This example of racial segregation in the UK was debated in the House of Commons and was covered in newspapers internationally including The Chicago Defender. The decision would eventually be reversed.

Amelia King
Born	Amelia Elizabeth King (1917-06-25)June 25, 1917 Stepney, London
Died	1995 (1996) (aged 78) Whitechapel, London
Nationality	British
Citizenship	British

King was born in Limehouse in London's East End in 1917.^[1][2] Her father, Henry King, born in Georgetown, British Guiana, worked as a stoker in the Merchant Navy, and her brother Fitzherbert King served in the Royal Navy.^[2][3] She worked as a fancy box maker before World War II and volunteered to join the Women's Land Army in September 1943.^[2][4]

Leaflet for a meeting at Conway Hall to protest racial discrimination, October 1943

King was refused entry to the Land Army by its Essex County branch committee because it was believed it would be difficult to place her, as there would be objections due to her ethnicity.^{[3][5][6][7][8][9][10]} With support from the Holborn Trades Council, King presented the issue to her local representative, Walter Edwards MP, who raised the issue of racism within the Land Army at the House of Commons.^[2][11] This, along with another racially-motivated incident that occurred within the same week in which cricketer Learie Constantine was denied accommodation at a London hotel, attracted widespread controversy and criticism and brought the 'Colour Bar' into focus.^[12][13][14]

In an interview with George Padmore, published in The Chicago Defender, King reflected "I said to them, if I'm not good enough to work on the land, then I am not good enough to make munitions. No one has ever suggested that my father and brother were not good enough to fight for the freedom of England."^[2]

The refusal was reversed and King was able to formally join the Women's Land Army in October 1943.^[5][15][16] She worked at Frith Farm in Fareham, Hampshire until 1944.^[1][6]

King died at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel in 1995, aged 78.^[1]

References

1. Bourne, Stephen (1 September 2012). "Amelia King & The Women's Land Army". The Motherland Calls: Britain's Black Servicemen & Women 1939-45. The History Press. ISBN 978-0-75249-071-7.
2. Romain, Gemma (7 September 2017). Race, Sexuality and Identity in Britain and Jamaica: The Biography of Patrick Nelson, 1916-1963. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 108. ISBN 978-1-47258-864-7.
3. Fryer, Peter (1 January 1984). Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain. University of Alberta. ISBN 978-0-86104-749-9 – via Google Books.
4. Rush, Anne Spry (9 June 2011). Bonds of Empire: West Indians and Britishness from Victoria to Decolonization. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-958855-8 – via Google Books.
5. Ginn, Peter; Goodman, Ruth; Langlands, Alex (24 September 2012). Wartime Farm. London. ISBN 978-1-84533-740-7. OCLC 893653084.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
6. Latherow, Tamisan (18 August 2020). "Breaking the Colour Bar - The little-known and extraordinary story of one particular land girl". Museum of English Rural Life. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
7. "Diaspora". Understanding Slavery Initiative. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
8. . Chronicle World. Archived from the original on 1 November 2013. Retrieved 30 October 2013.
9. Hayes, Floyd Windom (1 January 2000). A Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African American Studies. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-939693-52-8 – via Google Books.
10. Lindsey, Lydia; Wilson, Carlton E. (1 January 1994). "Spurring a Dialogue to Place the African European Experience Within the Context of an Afrocentric Philosophy". Journal of Black Studies. 25 (1): 41–61. doi:10.1177/002193479402500103. JSTOR 2784413. S2CID 144321312.
11. "Londoners' Protest Meeting Against Racial Discrimination". Warwick Digital Collections. 1943. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
12. Werran, Kate (19 July 2020). An American uprising in Second World War England : mutiny in the duchy. Yorkshire. ISBN 978-1-5267-5955-9. OCLC 1147973551.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
13. Smith, Harold L. (15 June 1996). Britain in the Second World War: A Social History. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-4493-9 – via Google Books.
14. Kushner, Antony Robin Jeremy (1 January 2004). We Europeans?: Mass-observation, 'race' and British Identity in the Twentieth Century. Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-0206-4 – via Google Books.
15. "Women's Land Army". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). 12 October 1943. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
16. Smith, Graham A. (30 June 2010). "Jim Crow on the home front (1942–1945)". Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 8 (3): 317–328. doi:10.1080/1369183X.1980.9975641.