Kandace Chimbiri - The Story of Britain's Black Airmen

Kandace Chimbiri (writing as K.N. Chimbiri) started as a self-published author.

She didn’t grow up wanting to be a writer. However, she was greatly disturbed by the lack of diversity in children’s books, particularly in Black history.  In 2009, Kandace set up her own one-woman publishing house to address this inequity. Over the next decade, she researched, wrote, published and distributed four Black history books for children from her spare bedroom.

She has also worked with museums on children’s trails, workshops, outreach projects and tours.  In 2013 she was part of the community committee for the Origins of the Afro Comb, 6,000 Years Of Art and Culture exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

In 2020 Kandace signed a three-book deal with Scholastic, which included a reprint of The Story of Windrush.

Kandace joined Nikki Gamble to talk about her experience as a publisher and writer - and to explain the background to her most recent book, The Story of Britain's Black Airmen.

Purchase The Story of Britain's Black Airmen from our bookselling partner Best Books for Schools.

Publisher's Blurb
Explore the fascinating, rarely-heard stories of Black airmen during the First and Second World Wars. The Story of Britain's Black Airmen celebrates the inspiring contributions of people of African descent to British aviation. From pilots to ground crew, and with tales from across the globe, the story of Britain's Black airmen is an important part of the history of flying.

By aiming for the skies, many helped bring about changes that are still making our world a better place. Includes inspirational key figures such as Cy Grant, Errol Barrow, Sam King and John Henry Smythe With full-colour illustration by Grenadian illustrator Elizabeth Lander

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

In the reading corner today, I'm really thrilled to be welcoming CandE Berry , who's going to be talking to us about her three historical books for children, including the most recent, which is Britain's Black Airmen. Now, we've had some fantastic black historians on , uh, our podcast in the past , uh, professor Hakeem Addie and David osu , but you are ground roots , and I was so interested to read your story and how you came to be publishing these books. And I think we should start there.

Speaker 2 0:35

Yes. My story is a little different. I, I'm not a trained historian at all. In fact, I describe myself as a black history enthusiast. Um, I loved black history from the time I was at secondary school in Barbados. I was born in the uk. I was born in London. My parents are part of the, what we call now, the wind rush generation. They came from Barbados in the sixties. They met here and we lived in Lewisham in South London, and I had my primary school education there. And then my parents went back to Barbados and they took my sister and they took me of course. And , um, I had all my secondary education there. And it wasn't until I was actually about 28 that I decided to come back to London. And so you could almost say I was sort of repeating what my parents had done. And my job was admin, but I still was interested in history and I also was still interested in books. And this is how I became an author. It wasn't something that I thought about as a child, but when I went into big bookshops in London and saw all these thousands of books, and, you know, that was amazing coming from a small island like Barbados. And then you can go into bookshop with thousands of books. And I particularly was looking at the time for children's books about history to send to friends in Barbados and for friends here that were having children. And I was shocked, really shocked, disappointed, and yeah, I just couldn't believe that there was such a small selection of books. Usually perhaps six at most for Black History Month, African American history being the main focus, sometimes Nelson Mandela as well. But nothing about black British history, nothing about the history of all these places that had been part of the British Empire in Africa and the Caribbean. Nothing, you know, the history that I'd learned at school. And I was just so shocked. And that's how I decided then to start writing Black history books for children on the side. So I started that about, ooh , maybe about 14 years ago now. I just started self-publishing and writing books myself. I reached out to some museums and I would do things like tours on Saturdays, learn from people, and that's how it came about. So I'm not a trained historian at all.

Speaker 1 3:04

Now , I mentioned three books, but if you've been writing for 14 years , are there more books?

Speaker 2 3:10

Yes. I actually self-published four books in about 10 years. I wish I had done more, but it was difficult because I just sort of jumped into the self-publishing and didn't realize, oh, you have to do the marketing, the posting , the books, the invoicing, the everything, you know, it wasn't just the research and the writing the books and then having them, you know, printed paying and having them printed. But I did actually do four books. Um, step Back in Time to Ancient Kush was my first one that was kind of like a test. It was an activity book about the ancient Sudan using many of the artifacts that I'd seen in museums right here in the uk. And it was popular. I sold about 4,000 copies, so that then helped me to do the next book, which is about ancient Egypt. And then I wrote a book called Secrets of the Afro Comb, which was a book that was sold alongside some other titles at the Fitz William Museum in particular, because they had an exhibition called Origins of the Afro Comb. Wow. So there were three ancient history books that I did, and then I decided in 2017 to write a small book, my first hardback one called The Story of the Windrush. And that was the first black British history book I'd done. And I sort of did it in a style of a book that I thought I should have seen in the 1970s and almost

Speaker 1 4:30

Like a lady bird book. Like a lady that kind of luck to it. Yeah. Yes.

Speaker 2 4:34

And that was because I thought to myself, 2018, the next year is the 70th arrival of the wind rush . And I wasn't seeing books like that for children. And I thought, you know, this was actually my parents' story as well, although I didn't write it about my parents, I wrote about the whole wind rush generation. So the books that I'm writing, I i, I try to do them to sort of address the things that we haven't done in the past.

Speaker 1 4:58

I want to go to the most recent book. I think it came out earlier this year actually. Your book about Afro hair . Yeah . Now that's been really popular. It's a fantastic book. So tell us a bit about that.

Speaker 2 5:10

The idea for that book began to formulate, I'd say in 2013 when I was part of the origins of the Afro Comb exhibition. And that was all about African combs and certain styles of combs with certain hair textures from ancient Egypt right up to the modern black fist comb . And I noted when I was doing the workshops for children and so on, that a lot of the people were interested in artifacts in history, but a lot of them weren't. Many of them were just interested in it because it was to do with cones and combes are related to hair. And so I think from then I had the idea that we should have a book a bit more about the hair and the hairstyles. But what I wanted to do with this book was something a little bit different in that, that I wanted it to be a book that wouldn't necessarily be about history for people who are interested in history, but maybe people would learn the history more indirectly.

Speaker 1 6:07

So interesting. And , um, we are coming now to , uh, the book that's about to be published actually , uh, Britain's Black Airmen. And this is an absolutely fascinating , uh, read. I suppose I want to know what led you to this particular group of people to write about?

Speaker 2 6:28

So the idea for this book, funny enough, came out of the Windrush book. And as it was Self-published, I chose all the photos in the book. And the last photo in the book is a photo of a group of men onboard the Windrush ship in 1948 when it had arrived. And I chose the picture because at the back of the group is Sam King, who had fought for Britain during the World War Second World War. He was an engineer and he was part of ground crew. And he returned to Jamaica and then he came back on the wind rush , and that was the focus of the book. And I chose that photo because he was in it, and I liked the way that he was right at the back of this group of men, and that's why I chose it. But in the front of the group of men, there are two RAF men speaking to Sam King and the others. And one of them is a tall, thin black man in RAF uniform. And I looked at the photo at the time when I chose it and I thought, oh , that's interesting. And I thought nothing more of it . And then after the book was out, I was looking at it and it hit me one day I was sitting down and it hit me. That's a gentleman called Johnny Smy. And I knew Johnny Smy story and I knew that he had been a navigator during the Second World War. And I became really obsessed with that photo. And I was just captivated by the fact that there were two black historic figures that I knew of in the same photo. And the idea just grew from there. And I just thought, yes, we need to have a book. Originally I thought of only writing about the black navigators like Johnny Smy because that in itself is a whole story. But when I saw that 2018 was also RAF 100, I realized, well, it's a small book, but I will have to try and put in a little bit more than navigators. I'll have to mention some of the pilots. I'll have to mention the ground crew. And then I realized I'd also have to mention not many, but there were actually a few men who served during the First World War as well. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . So that's how it all came about really.

Speaker 1 8:35

Lots to ask you about various things that you've talked about there. Um, but I think I'm gonna ask you a publishing question first, which is about photographs. Because purchasing things to put in books, it's expensive to produce a book, isn't it? Yes . And I'm really impressed with the photographs. I do think photographs are important as well as the Elizabeth Landers wonderful portraits too . And it gives the veracity to the work. And there's something very moving about seeing a real photograph.

Speaker 2 9:08

I find it really interesting that you make that comment, Nikki , because usually adults say to me that they love the drawings. But what you've said is very, very true because I noticed that most children say to me, they like the photos. And when I ask the children why, they say, oh, because we know it was real and we know it was true. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> . So children, it's amazing that you say that because I myself for all lovely drawings, and of course the drawings are absolutely important. Yes . Mm-Hmm . And we all love them, but I know that having the photos in the book, it really does something to the children to understand, oh, this is real, real stories as opposed to a made up story.

Speaker 1 9:45

I agree. I'm a real advocate for photographs, <laugh> in historical books , um, and, and other books, you know, science books as well. Uh, I wanna talk a little bit about the way that you've written this and perhaps to go through some of the , uh, chapters, the introduction in a very , um, accessible and gentle way you explain the issues around class in Britain in 19th century and then gender, and then you set race in with those other inequalities in society. Do you see them as being very firmly connected?

Speaker 2 10:28

Yes. And I think this is something that is really important to remember, because obviously I'm very, very happy that we have black history month, and I really think we do need to talk about black history, but we still must always keep in the back of our mind that no histories are discreet or disconnected from each other. They all interrelate. And I think sometimes there's danger of people forgetting that these things are happening in a context, and that there are other things are happening as well, you know? So yes, race is extremely important, but for example, sometimes people say to me , well, are there any women in the book? Well, as a black woman, it would've been virtually impossible to do these things. It was difficult enough for the black men. But you've got to remember that there's also the issues of gender at the same time, and people's perceptions of what a woman could do. Even white women at this time, you know, during the Second World War, weren't expected to do war work or weren't expected to fly planes. I mean, they did have fighter pilots in I think the Soviet Union, maybe some other countries. But in Britain, you know, we didn't expect women to do that . Even some of the black airmen when they came to Britain, they were surprised to see women driving trucks and , you know , so all of these things they do interrelate. And we have to remember that things are happening in a context as well. So I do very much think it is important, and I think it's important to get children to understand the whole picture because sometimes I think people think, well, this was happening, but something else wasn't happening. And it, a lot of things were happening at the same time. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . Now race often will be more important than some of the other things in a person's experience, but they also have other things that are going on. Class is color, you know, all these other things as well.

Speaker 1 12:27

You start with two men who , um, were flying in the first world war, and how did they come to be doing this?

Speaker 2 12:37

Alexander Patterson, he has only come to light relatively recently, and it's because his descendants with one of his descendants was doing his family tree. So he's white. He was doing his family tree and didn't even know that this was his , um, ancestor. And he sort of alerted some museums and, you know , yeah. And that's how I found out about it. So there are many people in Britain today, not, not the majority, but there are many white British people in Britain today who may not even know that they had an ancestor who came from another part of the British Empire, you know, could be black or even, you know , could be other parts as well. So that's how his story came about, and the, the documents are there, but it was just that no one really connected all the dots or knew everything about it. Some of the family knew, but the another side of the family didn't know. And that was the side that was doing the , um, family tree.

Speaker 1 13:37

Were you getting your story from families then, or from museums? Where were you both ?

Speaker 2 13:42

I was, I was alerted first by the museum, and then I was able to interview , um, one of the family members and , uh, speak to him all about his research and then follow up online and , um, looking in the records. And that's how I found out. Unfortunately , um, there was no autobiography left, so I could only say what, you know, I could verify. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . So there's not a lot of information about his feelings and, you know , there are some gaps. But yeah, he did that and he flew six different planes , um, and he was more on the technical side, and that's how his story came to light. Since then, I have seen , uh, images of more black airmen Mm-Hmm . During the second , uh, first World War and in the RFC, but again, not much information. So they did exist. Mm-Hmm . They definitely were there. And then William Robinson Clarke from Jamaica, his story is a bit better known than , um, Alexander Patterson story, and he was actually the first black combat pilot, and he came from Jamaica. And there are records about that in Jamaica as well, but even in Jamaica, I wouldn't say his story is that well known either.

Speaker 1 14:50

That's one of the things that struck me reading your book , uh, particularly when we come to the Second World War. Uh, one was how many of the young men that you were writing about went on to be political activists or to have a real important role either as, you know, prime ministers or as lawyers. Uh, that was really fascinating to read what happened to them , uh, but also that their stories were probably not well known in the islands or the places that they'd come from. Uh, you know, it was as misty there as it was here. <laugh> .

Speaker 2 15:27

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, taking Barbados for example, and Al Barrow, you know, our first prime minister, the father of Independence is his name in Barbados, and we know about him and, you know, going to school in Barbados, we will learn about some of the social contributions he made and the political contributions did not hear anything about his service in the Second World War. In fact, we don't really even learn a lot about the Second World War. I see a lot of it on tv, and if you watch movies, there's a lot about it, but you don't actually learn about it much in school. So again, that this side of it's being overlooked. And I think part of it, as I say in the book, I think part of it is because when you live in a post-colonial society, your focus is more on post-colonial matters, really. But I think understanding this history is really important, not just for people here in Britain, but also for people in the colonies as well, or the ex colonies I should say.

Speaker 1 16:33

Were you able to uncover in your research much about, you know, these young men's motivation for wanting to come and fight in the British , uh, service? I mean, for instance, there was , um, the young man that came from Sierra Leone.

Speaker 2 16:49

Johnny smi .

Speaker 1 16:50

Yeah. And I was trying to get inside his head and as to why you would come to do that.

Speaker 2 16:56

That's one of the things that's really been a little bit frustrating in trying to do this, because same with him, same with Rol Barrow . You know, we don't have enough written information at the time about what they felt and why they wanted to do it. We do have some, so, s grant , he did write a book about his experiences in the RAF , which I mention in the , uh, book. And there are a couple others who talked a bit about it in interviews, you know , science later on in life as well. So there are the different motivations. Some of them maybe did feel that as citizens of the British Empire, it was their duty despite what happened. But I know at the time in the Caribbean and in Africa, there definitely were many people who did say black people should not fight for Britain. Definitely. There was , um, a gentleman in West Africa, I forget his name. He was locked up for the duration of the war. And there was also a man in Jamaica who also wrote an article. He later became an author, and , um, he was also locked up. There was a report called The Moines Report, which was looking just before the war at conditions in the Caribbean and how poor they were. And there had been riots in many of the colonies at the time because of the poor conditions, which really hadn't changed in a hundred years since the end of slavery. And in many cases had actually declined. And the report was sort of suppressed because, you know, the authorities felt, if people started talking about this report or reading this report, it would , uh, lessen support for the war effort. So it wasn't really until after that, you know, people talked about it a bit bit more . So some of them wanted, I think, to get away from the poor conditions. You know, they were young men, they are black men living in colonies, but they are seeing some of the same media that we are seeing here at the time, and they see themselves, someone just wanting to be in planes, wanting to fly, wanting to be doing something different. S Grant said he wanted to escape the boredom and monotony of life in a colony at the time. For some of them, there weren't many opportunities. Mm-Hmm . So there were a whole set of reasons, and many of them, some of the ground crews experiences I've read in a book, they said that they knew people were saying they shouldn't fight for Britain, but they still decided to do it. Anyway, one man said he just went because his friends were going. So he decided to go too .

Speaker 1 19:34

As many motivations as there are people at the end of the day.

Speaker 2 19:38

Yeah , exactly .

Speaker 1 19:40

Another thing struck me when I was reading your book, was how things changed between the first and the second World War. Yes. Suddenly, after Alexander Patterson and William Clark, it became illegal to fly. You had to be a , was it pure European descent?

Speaker 2 20:01

Yes. Yes. That was actually the rule. And I have to say, to be fair, the RAF even with that, was still better than the other branches of the armed forces because at least, you know, the RAF did eventually begin to take people who were not of pure European descent. But even during the Second World War, it was still, you know, much harder with the army and with the Navy as well. But yes, that was basically the rule. And again, this is where I think the element of class, not that it takes away from the race, but I think it's also important to remember that even white working class men at that time would've found it difficult to get into the Flying Corps or later the RAF . I mean, it did change. The RF did change. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> , I think it had to change eventually, but this is what we need to remember. We're in a time where your class is really important, and then you've got race on top of that.

Speaker 1 20:56

In recent years, we've, you know, heard reports of minorities not only to do with race being not so well treated in the forces. Yeah. Uh , I wondered whether it existed for these men during this time , uh, in the Second World War. Do we know much about how they related with their other officers and peers?

Speaker 2 21:20

This is something that I would like , um, historians to have another look at, because when I've been reading books around this to do the research, obviously I get the feeling that in Britain we are very often guilty of , um, comparing ourself to America and wanting to see ourself in a favorable light. So there's a lot of people who will sort of say things to the effect that America was bad. It was, you know, the Air Force was segregated. I mean, they didn't even really wanna have the Tuskegee Airmen at first, but it happened and it was segregated. In Britain, we didn't do that. Great. I think that is sort of glossing over the experiences. Yes. The men, the airmen in the Second World War were integrated, but that doesn't mean that they all had a great experience. Generally speaking, I would say the air crew seemed to have had better experiences than the ground crew. And again, this could be related a little bit to the issues of class. We need to kind of tease this out a bit more, but there were people who did have bad experiences. I mean, there was a color bar in Britain at the time, so obviously the airmen would have needed to know where they could go, where they couldn't go. Some of them had, and they've said this, they had fights with people, and it wasn't always white American men. There is one man who said, I didn't quote him in the book, but there is one man who was ground crew . He said, I came to fight an Italian and a German, and I ended up fighting an American and a British man versus that effect . And that's just the reality of it. I also think that we need to recognize that people at that time seemed to have accepted things that maybe we wouldn't find acceptable today. And that's why I want to make the point that about class and gender and race, people were born into society where I think they were raised to accept that if you belong to this group, this gender, whatever, this race class, you can do this. And others can't do that. So some of the experiences that they would've had, we would look back on them today and recognize that those were racists. They may not have responded to all of them in the same way. Mm-Hmm .

Speaker 1 23:36

Important point. I just want to make a comment really that I appreciated in the writing. Again, it only gets a little, little piece because, you know, it , it's, it moves along quickly at a pace, your book. But you did mention that some people were kind and took them into their homes and some weren't. And I think that's very important because sometimes there are assumptions that everybody hated these people. Nobody, you know, had any friends, nobody , um, looked out for people. And that actually is a distortion of the truth as well. Yes ,

Speaker 2 24:16

Yes, exactly. And , um, people, and yeah. And that's why it is important to mention that as well. Generally speaking, I think , um, many of the airmen had positive experiences and positive interactions with most of the British people, the white British people that they came in contact with. Sam King mentioned that people often invited them into his home, and he said the, the homes were cold <laugh>, so the homes were cold, but at least I could see that the hearts were warm. So that was good. That's nice. Yeah. And I know from reading that some of the people themselves didn't really know how people were being treated in other parts of the empire. So they knew that Britain had an empire. They were proud of being, you know, white British people and having this big empire, bigger than what the Germans had and what everyone else had. But I don't think they really understood how things were in those colonies. So when they met some of these black airmen, for many of them, it was the first time to actually really understand the consequences of empire. And they weren't always pleased. They weren't , sometimes they were ashamed when they realized how people were treated in the colonies and how things were set up. So, you know, it's a two-way thing as well.

Speaker 1 25:32

So I, I feel there's so much more that I could , uh, talk to you about, but there is one burning question. Who are you going to write about next?

Speaker 2 25:42

Oh, I am not allowed to say Nikki . I'm sworn to secrecy. But what I would say is, I think it's going to compliment this book. I think I can say that.

Speaker 1 25:54

Okay. I won't press you on that, but I do look forward to, to hearing what that's about. It's been such a pleasure talking to you today and an education, so thank you so much.

Speaker 2 26:06

Thank you so much for having me. Nikki ,

Speaker 3 26:10

In the Reading Corner is presented by Nikki Gamble and produced by Alison Hughes. This episode is generously sponsored by Scholastic Children's Books. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a review. If you would like to find out about other events and courses, visit just imagine.co uk. Join us again in the reading corner on your favorite podcast platform.