A QUIET POCKET OF PROTEST
By McKENZIE CURTIS
LONDON – The first thing you notice when you walk into Wayne Campbell’ s shop are photos from protests showing people yelling, and grieving, with their fists and signs thrust into the air. Yet, Campbell’ s gallery, called A Celebration of Demonstration, is a quiet pocket of the Brixton Village marketplace.
One of the most politically active areas in London, Brixton has been reshaped by gentrification. But Campbell, whose gallery houses photographs of protests, organizers, and demonstrations, works to celebrate and preserve the history of Black activism in Britain.
Campbell traces the beginning of his efforts to the police killing of George Floyd, in 2020.
“ I went on my very first protest after the murder of George Floyd( in Minneapolis, Minn). I was so incensed, so upset, so riled up,” he said.“ I wasn’ t sure what I was supposed to do. So, I remember going home, I was crying, and the universe simply said,‘ record it.’”
Campbell knows what it is like to live in a community that media organizations have stigmatized, like the neighborhood in the United States where Floyd died.
“ I grew up in Brixton at a time when it was considered in the same sentence as Johannesburg( South
Wayne Campbell holding a handwritten note from the wall in his gallery, A Celebration of Demonstration.
Africa) and Compton( a Black section of Los Angeles), as being one of the worst places in the world to visit. But where everybody saw Brixton as this space to be avoided … I saw family, and I grew up in this bubble of what I would refer to as safety,” he said.
A rich Afro Caribbean presence and history have existed in the Brixton area of South London since the late 1940s. Following World War II, Britain – crippled by labor shortages and an economic recession – needed laborers to help restart its economy. It was during this time that hundreds of Afro Caribbeans, looking for employment and a better life, migrated to England. After the British Nationality Act took effect on January 1, 1949, Afro Caribbean migration into England increased.
The law redefined British citizenship to include the citizens of all British colonies and Commonwealth countries. They“ shall by virtue of that citizenship have the status of a British subject,” the law proclaimed.
The early Afro Caribbean migrants, many of whom ended up in Brixton, were called the Windrush Generation after the name of the former Royal Navy troopship HMT Empire Windrush that brought hundreds of Jamaicans to England on June 22, 1948, six months before the Nationality Act took effect
Today, Brixton is slowly facing gentrification, with the Afro Caribbean community being overtaken by urban renewal and the growing number of white residents that it attracts. Campbell acknowledges the change but resists the idea of losing Brixton’ s cultural identity.
“ Some would just call it change. But we have history here. And it’ s important that we do our best to try and hold onto it,” he said.
For Campbell, his shop is a place of visual activism. Its many photographs are a means of holding onto memories of the Afro Caribbean community he grew up in, and its rich cultural history. •
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