Barbara Beese
Barbara Beese (born 2 January 1946) is a British activist, writer, and former member of the British Black Panthers.[1][2] She is most notable as one of the Black activists known as the Mangrove Nine, charged in 1970 with inciting a riot protesting against the police targeting of the Mangrove Restaurant in Notting Hill, west London, and ultimately acquitted.
![](../I/m/Photograph_of_Barbara_Beese%2C_August_9th_1970_(24284954734).jpg)
Black Panthers and activism
Beese came to public attention in 1970 as one of the Mangrove Nine, who on 9 August that year marched to the police station in Notting Hill, London, to protest against police raids of the Mangrove restaurant.[3] Violent clashes between the police and the Black Panther marchers led to charges and an important trial that is said to have "changed racial justice in the UK forever".[3] Beese was one of those arrested and charged on a number of accounts, and she was found not guilty on all.[4]
She contributed to the journal Race Today on a number of topics, including education.[5]
Personal life
Beese had a relationship with fellow Black Panther Darcus Howe, with whom she had a son, Darcus Beese.[6]
See also
References
- Field, Paul (14 April 2017). "The Real Guerrillas". Jacobin. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
- Qasim, Wail (11 April 2017), "Freida Pinto's casting as the only lead female character in Guerilla erases women from the history of Black Power", The Independent.
- Bunce, Robin; Paul Field (29 November 2010). "Mangrove Nine: the court challenge against police racism in Notting Hill". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
- Brook, Pete (4 February 2018), "When cops raided a hip 1970s London cafe, Britain’s Black Power movement rose up: The Mangrove Nine fought the law — and the law did not win", Timeline, Medium.
- Paul, Warmington (2014). Black British Intellectuals and Education: Multiculturalism's Hidden History. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, Taylor and Francis. ISBN 9781317752363. OCLC 871224341.
- HUME, LUCY. PEOPLE OF TODAY 2017;. DEBRETT'S. ISBN 9781999767037. OCLC 1007310029.