Walter Tull

Newham’s Black Pioneers

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.

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:

https://www.whufc.com/news/articles/2021/october/25-october/jack-leslie-east-londoner-who-should-have-been-englands-first

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.

Brian Dear reading from John Charles’ book of remembrance

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.

West Ham’s ‘Three Degrees’: Clyde Best (back row), Clive Charles (front row, 3rd from the right) and Ade Coker. Coker scored one of the goals in a 2-0 win

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.

TalkSPORT encore!

Bill Hern must feel like a regular now following another appearance on the Hawksbee & Jacobs show on Talksport radio:

You can buy ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ (“an important book” – Paul Hawksbee) from the publishers, Conker Editions, Amazon or, if you prefer, from your favourite local book shop.

Walter Tull honoured

As part of Black History Month celebrations, the Post Office have painted four of their post boxes in the UK black. Each one celebrates the contribution of a black person to British society. We can debate whether this is tokenism of the worst sort (four? In the whole of the UK?) or whether we should accept that even a token gesture is better than nothing. We can also debate whether the ‘right’ four people have been chosen to represent the contribution black people have been making in Britain for centuries. But let’s leave those questions aside for now and express our pleasure that one of ‘Football’s Back Pioneers’ is among the chosen four.

Walter Tull was the first black player at Tottenham Hotspur (his career there spanned the years 1909 to 1911) and Northampton Town (1911 to 1914) and, according to the press release that accompanied the story, he was also Glasgow Rangers’ first black player. As far as we know Walter never played a competitive game for Rangers but at least one source states that he signed for them in February 1917 whilst in Scotland on his officer training course with the intention of playing for them after the war. Regardless of his status as a Rangers player, what is beyond doubt is that Walter was an important figure not just as a footballer but also as a soldier.

Walter served in the Army from 1914 until his death in France in 1918. He was promoted to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant at a time when Army Regulations specifically excluded anyone with non-white heritage from holding an officer rank (Walter’s grandfather had been an enslaved man on Barbados). The powers that be had a range of excuses for discriminating against soldiers of black or mixed heritage, one was that white troops would object to being led by a black officer. It’s surely worth mentioning that a number of the men Walter commanded risked their lives trying to retrieve his body from no-man’s land where he fell. His body never was recovered and so he has no known final resting place, but he is commemorated on the war memorial at Arras, one of 34,785 men remembered there who have no known grave. He is also named on the memorial in his home town of Folkestone and on the one in nearby Dover. At Northampton Town’s ground his memory is honoured with the words:

“Through his actions, W. D. J. Tull ridiculed the barriers of ignorance that tried to deny people of colour equality with their contemporaries. His life stands testament to a determination to confront those people and those obstacles that sought to diminish him and the world in which he lived. It reveals a man, though rendered breathless in his prime, whose strong heart still beats loudly”

Walter Tull deserves to be remembered and we are glad that ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ is playing a small part in that.

Outside Write

Appearing on the Outside Write podcast gave us a rare opportunity to both speak about ‘Football’s Black Pioneers’ as the interview was pre-recorded and then edited. Chris Lee has done a great job of stitching our contributions together so that it sounds seamless. You can listen here: https://outsidewrite.co.uk/podcast-black-pioneers-of-the-football-league/

We aren’t sure how we will go down with regular listeners to the podcast as a discussion of first black players in the EFL seems positively mainstream compared to some of the topics discussed, as you will see if you check out the link. If you have time to listen to some of the other interviews you may well be amazed by some of the stories that will definitely broaden your horizons!