Ivor Gustavus Cummings (10 December 1913 – 17 October 1992) was a British civil servant

Val Wilmer Valerie Sybil Wilmer (born 7 December 1941) is a British photographer and writer specialising in jazz, gospel, blues, and British African-Caribbean music and culture. Her notable books include ''Jazz People'' (1970) and ''As Serious As Your Lif ...

Obituary: Ivor Cummings
'' The Independent'', 4 December 1992. Accessed 15 November 2020. of Sierra Leonean ancestry, in 1941 he became the first black official in the British Colonial Office. He has been dubbed the 'gay father of the Windrush generation'.Nicholas Boston
Ivor Cummings was the ‘gay father of the Windrush generation’ – so why haven’t we heard of him?
''The Independent'', 25 June 2019. Accessed 15 November 2020.

Life

Ivor Cummings was born in West Hartlepool on 10 December 1913. His father, Ishmael Cummings, the son of a wealthy merchant from Sierra Leone, was a doctor. His mother, Johanna Archer, was an English nurse. The couple had met when working together at the Royal Victoria Infirmary. Ivor Cummings grew up with his mother in Addiscombe, where the family befriended the widow of the composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, to whom they were related by marriage. After being bullied at Whitgift School, Ivor tried joining his father in Freetown. However, feeling an outsider there, he returned to England, where he showed academic strength at Dulwich College. The family did not have funds to support Cummings training as a doctor. After briefly working in Freetown as a clerk for the United Africa Company, he returned to England looking for medical scholarships. Abandoning those plans, in 1935 he became warden of

Aggrey House Aggrey House was a hostel established in London in 1934 to cater for African students and students of African descent. It was named after James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey. It was at 47 Doughty Street, a typical Georgian terraced house, on the recommen ...

, a government-run centre for colonial students, arranging meetings, lectures, dances and social events there. There was competition between Aggrey House and the hostel of the

West African Students' Union The West African Students' Union (WASU), founded in London, England, in 1925 and active into the 1960s,"History o ...

(WASU). In August 1937 Cummings even informed the police that two Aggrey residents had taken girls to spend the night at the WASU hostel.Marc Matera
Black Internationalism and African and Caribbean Intellectuals in London, 1919-1950
PhD thesis, Rutgers University, 2008 Aggrey House closed in 1940, after reports that communists had come to dominate the House Committee and that one student had brought a sex worker into the hostel. Cummings himself enjoyed London's 1930s night life, as a gay member of 'the group', a set of African intellectuals in London which included the American singer John Payne and the British composer Reginald Foresythe. He joined the Colonial Office in 1941, and by 1942 its new public relations office was heralding his appointment as evidence against the existence of racial discrimination in Britain. He served as secretary of a new Advisory Committee on the Welfare of Colonial Peoples in the United Kingdom, a Colonial Office initiative to assume direct responsibility for housing colonial students. After the war he worked to recruit African nurses for the National Health Service. In 1947 Cummings visited Lagos on official business. When the Greek proprietor of the Bristol Hotel there refused him a room because of his race, the scandal hit the British press. He was awarded the

OBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

in the

1948 Birthday Honours The 1948 Birthday Honours were appointments by King George VI to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of the Commonwealth Realms. The appointments were made to celebrate the official birthday of the King, a ...

. In June 1948 he was the official representative who met the West Indian immigrants arriving on the ''

Empire Windrush HMT ''Empire Windrush'', originally MV ''Monte Rosa'', was a passenger liner and cruise ship launched in Germany in 1930. She was owned and operated by the German shipping line in the 1930s under the name ''Monte Rosa''. During World War II she ...

'', the beginning of the Windrush generation, helping them to find accommodation and jobs. His choice of a former air raid shelter beneath Clapham Common as temporary accommodation for ''Windrush'' arrivals lacking prearranged accommodation resulted in

Brixton Brixton is a district in south London, part of the London Borough of Lambeth, England. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. Brixton experienced a rapid rise in population during the 19th ce ...

becoming a permanent centre for the African Caribbean community in Britain. Cummings visited the United States on a fellowship, co-authoring a survey of colonial students. He was invited to become Colonial Secretary in Trinidad, but in 1958 resigned from the Colonial Office to work for

Kwame Nkrumah Kwame Nkrumah (born 21 September 190927 April 1972) was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He was the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana, having led the Gold Coast to independence from Britain in 1957. An in ...

, training diplomats in post-independence Ghana. He was posted to the Ghana High Commission in London to recruit West Indian professionals, including

Ulric Cross Philip Louis Ulric Cross (1 May 1917 – 4 October 2013) was a Trinidadian jurist, diplomat and Royal Air Force (RAF) navigator, recognised as possibly the most decorated West Indian of World War II. He is credited with helping to prevent some ...

. He later worked as a training officer for Yengema Diamond Mines in Sierra Leone, and as public relations adviser to the London-based distillers Duncan, Gilbey and Matheson. Cumming died of cancer in Westminster Hospital, on 17 October 1992.

References

External links

Cummings, Ivor, 1913-1992(13) - Black Studies , Alexander Street
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cummings, Ivor 1913 births 1992 deaths English civil servants Sierra Leone Creole people Civil servants in the Colonial Office English people of Sierra Leonean descent People from West Hartlepool