Cotton Capital: Resistance – episode 5 – podcast | News

This week we are revisiting our Cotton Capital series that originally ran in April 2023. Today in Focus will be back with new episodes on Tuesday 29 August.

The Guardian journalist Lanre Bakare travels to Manchester, the city where the Guardian newspaper was founded, to learn more about Black Mancunian history.

He hears from Hakim Adi, a professor of history at the University of Chichester, about the 1945 Pan-African Congress in the city. This historic event would come to shape independence movements across Africa, but despite its critical importance, many feel it remains largely forgotten.

Lanre meets Dr Diane Watt and Prof Gus John, who tell him about their decades-long activism within the Black community. He also talks to Irvine Williams, the operational manager of Hideaway, a youth centre in Moss Side that has been working with young people for more than 50 years.

This podcast is episode five in a six-part series for the Cotton Capital project, which is looking at the Guardian’s links to transatlantic slavery and the legacies of that history. It takes listeners from Manchester to Jamaica, the US, Nigeria and Brazil and back to the UK.

Host: Lanre Bakare

Guests: Prof Hakim Adi, Dr Diane Watt, Prof Gus John and Irvine Williams

Series producer: Courtney Yusuf

Producer: Silas Gray

Consultant executive producer: Colin Stone

Historical consultant: Dr Kerry Pimblott

Original music: Melo-Zed

Sound design: Max Sanderson

Development series producer: Tej Adeleye

Development producers: Weyland McKenzie-Witter and Fatuma Khaireh

Commissioning editors: Nicole Jackson and Maya Wolfe-Robinson

With thanks to: Mea Aitken and Kids of Colour, Dr Charisse Burden-Stelly, Dr Adam Elliott-Cooper and Venessa Scott

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