Kathleen Wrasama (her name sometimes given as Kathleen Warsama) was an

Ethiopian Ethiopians are the native inhabitants of Ethiopia, as well as the global diaspora of Ethiopia. Ethiopians constitute several component ethnic groups, many of which are closely related to ethnic groups in neighboring Eritrea and other parts of ...

-born British community organiser. As a child she moved to England and became a founding member of the Stepney Coloured Peoples Association, an organisation working to improve community relations, education and housing for black people.Leah Sinclair
"Suffrage 100: The Black Women Who Changed British History"
''The Voice'', 6 February 2018. In 2018 she was cited by '' The Voice'' newspaper as one of eight black women – alongside

Olive Morris Olive Elaine Morris (26 June 1952 – 12 July 1979) was a Jamaican-born British-based community leader and activist in the feminist, black nationalist, and squatters' rights campaigns of the 1970s. At the age of 17, she claimed she was assaul ...

, Connie Mark,

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Lilian Bader Lilian Bader ( Bailey; 18 February 1918 – 14 March 2015) was one of the first Black women to join the British armed forces. Early life Lilian Bader was born at 19 Upper Stanhope Street in the Toxteth Park area of Liverpool to Marcus Bailey, ...

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and

Mary Seacole Mary Jane Seacole (;Anionwu E.N. (2012) Mary Seacole: nursing care in many lands. ''British Journal of Healthcare Assistants'' 6(5), 244–248. 23 November 1805 – 14 May 1881) was a British-Jamaican nurse and businesswoman who set up t ...

– who have contributed to changing British history, although there has been little documentation of her life.

Biography

Wrasama was brought to England as a child in 1917 by church missionaries. The experiences she suffered living in a children's home in

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...

caused her to run away, and she subsequently found work as a farm labourer."Kathleen Wrasama"

Black Cultural Archives Black Cultural Archives (BCA) is an archive and heritage centre in Brixton, London, devoted to the histories of people of African and Caribbean descent in Britain. Also known as BCA, it was founded in 1981, by educationalist and historian Len Gar ...

, 1980. Moving to London in the 1930s, she worked as an extra in Paul Robeson films. She and her husband later established a Somali seaman's mission in Stepney, and in the 1950s she was a founding member of the Stepney Coloured People's Association, which was committed to improving community relations, as well as education and housing for black people. She told of her life in London's East End in an interview for the 1982 BBC documentary ''Surviving: Experience of Migration and Exile'', and was later invited to visit a school, where she spoke about her early years and her experiences of racism.Celia Burgess-Macey
"Tackling racism and sexism in the primary classroom"
in Dawn Gill, Barbara Mayor, Maud Blair (eds), ''Racism and Education: Structures and Strategies'', Sage, 1992, pp. 279–80.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wrasama, Kathleen Year of birth missing Year of death missing Date of birth missing Date of death missing British community activists British people of Ethiopian descent Black British activists