It was a great pleasure to support Neandra Etienne when she put on an exhibition celebrating some of the black footballers who are strongly connected with the London Borough of Newham. Staged as part of Newham’s Black History Month activity, Neandra worked tirelessly to pull together an exhibition of photos and other artefacts. Hosted by the Canning Gallery (special thanks to Rachel Hollington) the exhibition attracted some high profile visitors as well as three classes of Year 4 children from a local school.
The exhibition has finished now but it seems a shame not to have a permanent record of a small part of what was on display. The main focus of the exhibition was on three of Football’s Black Pioneers.
Walter Tull
That Walter played for Tottenham Hotspur and Northampton Town is well-known, no obvious Newham link there! But before joining Spurs Walter played for top amateur club Clapton.
Clapton FC (now Clapton Community FC) still exist and had kindly shared their Walter Tull banner with Neandra for the exhibition.
Other exhibits included an entire wall of school work about Walter. When we first saw this we assumed it was the work of a whole class but, no, it was the work of one ten year-old girl, Halima.
Immensely impressive!
Neandra had also arranged for author, Phil Vasili, a leading authority on Walter and his family, to give a talk at the launch event.
Jack Leslie
The second player to feature prominently in the exhibition was Jack Leslie. Eighteen months ago Jack’s story was known to a relatively small number of, mostly, Plymouth Argyle supporters. Thanks to the outstanding work of the Jack Leslie Foundation his story is becoming increasingly mainstream as recent mentions on Coronation Street and the Antiques Road Trip demonstrate!
The exhibition had a plaque on display that is to be put up at the address where Jack was living when he signed for Plymouth Argyle.
Getting permission for a plaque is no easy matter and so Neandra deserves great credit for having brought this about.
Greg Foxsmith and Matt Tiller from The Jack Leslie Campaign played a prominent role and Matt performed his ‘Ballad of Jack Leslie’ live. Although they had worked together on the project this was also the first time Greg and Matt had met Jack’s granddaughters.
West Ham United did a very nice piece about Jack that was filmed at the exhibition:
John ‘Charlo’ Charles
John Charles is one of English football’s forgotten heroes – but we are doing all we can to change the ‘forgotten’ bit of that. As son Mitch commented, his dad is becoming ‘the best known unknown player’!
We have documented elsewhere on this site John Charles achievements but they bear repeating:
- West Ham’s first black player of the modern era
- the first black player to represent West Ham in the Football League
- the first black player to represent England at any level
- the first black player to score a goal for England
- the first black player to captain a team to a major trophy
And that’s just the main ones! Why is his name not known by all football fans?
The exhibition featured a wall devoted to ‘Charlo’ with his brother Clive, who could boast many achievements of his own, particularly after he moved to America, facing him from the wall opposite.
The gallery hosted an event dedicated to Charlo and it was a delight to meet so many of his family (sons, daughter, grandson).
Charlo’s son, Mitch, entertained us with many stories about his father while Bill Hern, co-author of Football’s Black Pioneers, talked about Charlo’s many achievements on the football field.
West Ham legend, Brian Dear also attended. Brian read from Charlo’s funeral eulogy and was visibly moved as he recalled a dear friend and team mate.
John’s brother, Clive, also had a prominent place in the exhibition. Clive made only fifteen appearances for West Ham but had a successful spell at Cardiff City where he made 92 appearances. He had even more success in America, initially as a player and subsequently as a coach in both the women’s and men’s games. In 1998 he was assistant coach to the USA team at the 1994 World Cup in France.
Clive was one of the three black West Ham players who made history on 1st April 1972 when they played against Tottenham Hotspur, pre-dating West Bromwich Albion’s ‘Three Degrees’ (Laurie Cunningham, Brendon Batson and Cyrille Regis) by several years.
Conclusion
It always seems a pity when an exhibition is taken down at the end of its run, this was a splendid effort by Neandra and we look forward to the unveiling of the Jack Leslie plaque.