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PASSIONATE: Dorothy Kuya

IT IS a great honour to be asked by people who knew, respected and worked alongside Dorothy Kuya for many years, to offer these reflections on her life and work.

Dorothy was a tireless campaigner against discrimination and racism.

Born in Liverpool in April 1932, to a white English mother and a Sierra Leone father, she took her stepfather’s name who had helped raise her from a young age.

She trained as a nurse and as a teacher - both callings drawing on her compassionate nature and her quest to acquire knowledge and passing it on. Blessed with excellent communication skills allied to a keen mind and a direct approach, Dorothy was a formidable campaigner.

She has been variously been described as a cultural historian (reflected in her interests in African culture and heritage), a political activist (member of the British Communist Party from a young age) and a community champion (a leading member of Granby Residents Association).

Anti-racism

It is as an anti-racist campaigner that Dorothy first came to national prominence when she was employed as the first community relations officer in Merseyside.

Prior to her appointment, in mid to late 1960s, she had campaigned with others against the Government’s criteria for funding projects under their Urban Programme to those areas where the “immigration population” forms more than 20 per cent of the local population.

Liverpool, by that criterion, would not qualify as the overwhelming majority of Liverpool’s black population is locally born with many families established since the 19th Century. The campaign was successful in convincing government that the problem was not one of language or custom assimilation but of discrimination and racism based largely on skin colour.

Dorothy was also involved in the Martin Luther King Foundation during this period, which resulted in the successful development of South Liverpool Personnel, a community-based employment and training agency.

Many other projects were developed in Liverpool with Dorothy’s input during her time as CRO. Including, the Black Social Workers Project (with Bill Davies, the only black Social Services Area Manager in the region) which led to the first black social workers being employed in Liverpool; Ujaama House, for homeless young people and the Merseyside Caribbean Centre, a social hub for generations of Liverpool 8 locals.

Dorothy was always a political person.

Before she joined the Communist Party (where she met Paul Robeson and Pablo Picasso among others), she was already influenced by Pan-Africanism, a worldview she always kept. Dorothy was a major influence on the politicisation of many young Liverpool-born black people who later went on to take leading roles in the black community’s development.

Equality

In 1980, Dorothy moved to London to take up the post of Head Race Equality Adviser for Haringey Council. She worked closely with Bernie Grant, then leader of Haringey Council, with whom she formed a lasting political alliance on issues including anti-racism and the African Reparation movement.

She was also a member of the inquiry chaired by Lord Gifford that produced the Broadwater Farm report on the 1985 riots in Haringey. She left Haringey Council to set up a consultancy called Affirmata, through which she delivered race equality training nationwide, and continued to campaign against racism and sexism in children’s book that she had begun some years earlier in Liverpool, contributing to Roy Preiswerk’s Sowing the Dragon’s Teeth, published in 1980.

In the mid-1980s, she became chair of Ujima, a London-wide housing association and helped steer the organisation to become the largest black-run social enterprise in Europe. A founder member and Director of Ujima, Tony Soares said “she was the best chair I ever had, supportive and decisive.”

Dorothy returned to Liverpool in 1994 to a house she had bought some years before, in Liverpool 8 [referred to as Toxteth by the media] where she was born and raised, as she always intended to return.

Retirement for Dorothy meant increased voluntary work, particularly related to African heritage. With Eric Lynch, she instituted and conducted the Liverpool Slavery History Trail tours around the city helping reveal Liverpool’s hidden history.

African history

She was a key figure in trying to establish an international library of African and Diaspora literature, although this has not successful as her campaign for the establishment of the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool which she saw as part of the reparation to African slaves. The museum opened on August 23, 2007.

A few years after returning from London, informed by the council that her house in Jermyn Street would be demolished and she would be rehoused. Incensed by the suggestion, through the Granby Residents Association, Dorothy played a leading part in getting the decision to demolish over 200 homes overturned, nearly half of which had been boarded up and left unoccupied for years by the council and housing associations with a view for redevelopment.

Dorothy commissioned me to produce a report for the Council on alternatives to the demolition, including gauging owner-occupying interest in living in the area. Among its recommendations the report proposed for empty properties be sold for £1 each providing the properties were brought up to proper building and living standards.

The Council sat on that report, produced in 2000, for years leaving the empty properties to deteriorate further. However, just a few months before Dorothy’s passing, 20 people were selected through a draw to buy the £1 properties. Her time on that project had not been wasted after all.

More recently, she devoted her activist time to fewer projects but still retained a passionate involvement with the National Assembly of Women that took up issues and campaigned for women rights world wide Dorothy’s and with Africa Presence. Africa Presence was set up to promote African heritage and culture, the group is negotiating to acquire a building with historical connections to Africans in Liverpool to convert into an African heritage and cultural centre. Dorothy bequeathed her library (over 2000 books and publications) to Africa Presence.

Dorothy has made a lasting impression on me as an exceptional, passionate and articulate person with an energetic mind. She was kind, generous with her time and a role model to me. She was a fighter for just causes or as Angela Cobbinah writes in her tribute to Dorothy, “her fight was about enabling truth, equality and change.”

We will miss this great daughter of Liverpool.

Dorothy Kuya died on December 13, 2013, after a short illness aged 81.

*Louis Julienne is a journalist, author and lifelong activist