Separating histories into categories can be dangerous, according to British-Nigerian historian and filmmaker David Olusoga.
“The division that I’m most interested in — the one that I’ve spent the past couple of years thinking about — is the division between what we call black history and mainstream history,” Olusoga said.
Olusoga was the featured speaker at last week’s Ross Horning Lecture, which is hosted annually by the Department of History at Creighton.
This year’s lecture, which took place in a nearly full Harper Auditorium, was titled, “Remembering and Forgetting: Black History and the British Empire.”
The Ross Horning Lecture Series is a way to remember the life and values of Ross Horning, who taught history at Creighton.
Associate professor of history Scott Eastman said that the series of presentations are meant to serve as a reminder of the “enduring value of history and humanistic tradition.”
“I’m happy to say that the Ross Horning Lecture has become the signature public event for the department of history,” Eastman said.
Olusoga has an expansive resume, which includes being a regular writer for The Guardian, an author of four books on a variety of histories and the creator of four history-based TV series on the BBC Two, including the BAFTA-winning “Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners.”
One of the many topics Olusoga discussed during the lecture was the way in which people seem to forget or ignore the historical roles of people with African ancestors.
“The forgetting of slavery, the most important chapter of Britain’s relationship with Africa and Africans, has been one of the most effective, most brilliantly executed, surgically-precise excisions of a part of history from a nation’s past,” Olusoga said.
He said that geography played a crucial role in making this “excision” possible.
“Britain’s relationship with plantation slavery was an ocean away on the islands of the Caribbean,” Olusoga said. “This allowed British people to imagine that their relationship with slavery could be seen as colonial or a foreign part of their history.”
Olusoga added that even after slavery was abolished in Britain, the nation continued to benefit from slavery through the cotton industry.
Olusoga also talked about significant memorials of black historical figures that are unknown in Britain.
He said that while these memorials are prominent in position within London, they are “totally obscure in national memory.”
Throughout the evening, Olusoga continued to tell stories and share histories that he said proved that black history is a key part of British history.