"In addition to providing spritual comfort for all, we have given to our coloured people during the last twelve months - bed and breakfast to nearly 900 stranded seamen, Christmas dinners to 127 families, Christmas gifts to more than 300 coloured children, a day in the country and by the sea to nearly 400 men, women and children, and over 200 parcels of clothing, boots, etc."
Kamal Chunchie, Coloured Men's Institute, 1936-37 Report
This online resource charts the history of the black and Asian community in Canning Town, east London, in the 1920s and 1930s. It tells the story of the Coloured Men's Institute and its founder, Kamal Chunchie, a man who can rightly be called east London's first black and Asian community leader.
These pages are part of a project that includes a booklet and exhibition, "The Other Eastenders" and a video, "Life and Times of Kamal Chunchie", which are based on fifty photographs of black and Asian people who lived in or passed through West Ham's docklands between the wars.
Only a few of these photographs have ever found their way into print or public display, and yet they provide a fascinating insight into a community whose very existence has largely been forgotten. The photographs show a community at times fearful, at times relaxing, but above all dignified and determined.
As well as the photographs, "The Other EastEnders" utilises contemporary accounts of Chunchie and his community, many of which tell of the racism both faced.
"Case after case has come to my notice of seamen who applied for work and who received the answer, 'We don't take niggers here'."
Kamal Chunchie in an interview with The Manchester Guardian, 1928
Eastside Community Heritage is very proud to make what we consider to be a significant contribution to east London and ethnic minority history by assembling and researching this project.
