Stella Dadzie facts for kids

Stella Dadzie, born in 1952, is a British teacher, activist, writer, and historian. She is famous for being a key part of the Black Women's Movement in the UK. In the 1970s, she helped start the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD). She also co-wrote a very important book in 1985 called The Heart of the Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain with Suzanne Scafe and Beverley Bryan. In 2020, she released another book, A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery & Resistance, which explores how enslaved women fought back.

Early Life and Challenges

Dadzie was born in London. Her mother was English, and her father was Ghanaian. Her father was Ghana's first trained pilot. He flew as a navigator for the RAF during the Second World War.

Stella lived in foster care in Wales for about 18 months. She returned to her mother when she was four years old. Dadzie shared that her family faced many difficulties. They experienced poverty, homelessness, and racism. Her mother was treated badly because she was a single parent with a Black child. They moved around London a lot because landlords often refused to rent to them due to racism. Stella did not meet her father and other siblings again until she was 12.

Activism and Important Work

As a student in the early 1970s, Dadzie studied in Germany for a year. There, she experienced very direct racism. When she came back to Britain, she worked with publications like African Red Family and The Black Liberator. She sold these journals outside Brixton tube station.

In her twenties, she joined protests in London and at Greenham Common. She was working as a teacher when she helped create the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD). This group was active from 1978 to 1982. It brought together different Black women's groups. OWAAD challenged the way white women dominated the women's liberation movement at that time.

Working with Other Activists

Before co-founding OWAAD, Dadzie was part of the United Black Women's Action Group (UBWAG) in Tottenham. There, she met Martha Osamor. She also met Gail Lewis and Gerlin Bean, who were members of the Brixton Black Women's Group (BBWG). These activists, along with others like Olive Morris, worked together under OWAAD.

The Heart of the Race

In 1985, the book The Heart of the Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain was published. Dadzie, Beverley Bryan, and Suzanne Scafe wrote it. They used interviews to share the experiences of Black women in Britain. The book also showed how the UK's Black Women's Movement grew.

The Heart of the Race won the 1985 Martin Luther King Award for Literature. A new edition of the book was released in 2018. In this new edition, Dadzie wrote: "We need to remember who we are, remember what we've come from, remember what we've achieved, and never let that be forgotten, because it gives us power, strength and vision."

Writing and Research

Dadzie has written a lot about teaching methods and how to support Black adult learners. She also writes about creating anti-racist plans for schools and youth services. Her poems have appeared in collections like Tempa Tupu! Africana Women's Poetic Self-Portrait (2008) and New Daughters of Africa (2019), edited by Margaret Busby.

In 2020, Dadzie's book A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery and Resistance was published. This book explores how enslaved women fought back against slavery. She explained that the idea for the book came from her studies at SOAS, University of London. She realized that studying history was like detective work. She wanted to find out what happened to women during slavery, as their stories were often left out of historical records.

A review of A Kick in the Belly said that Dadzie "puts a narrative of empowerment and hope at the centre of the brutal history of slavery." It called the book "a necessary addition to discussions of the legacies of slavery in Britain."

Dadzie also wrote the foreword for the 2021 edition of Black People in the British Empire by Peter Fryer. She also wrote the foreword for Hairvolution: Her Hair, Her Story, Our History (2021).

Stella Dadzie's important papers are kept at the Black Cultural Archives. They are some of the most visited collections there.

Selected Books

• The Heart of the Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain, with Beverley Bryan, Suzanne Scafe; 1985. New edition, 2018.
• Essential Skills for Race Equality Trainers, with Andy Forbes, Gurnam Heire; 1992.
• Older and Wiser: A Study of Educational Provision for Black and Ethnic Minority Elders, 1993.
• Toolkit for Tackling Racism in Schools, 2000.
• A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery and Resistance, 2020.
• Hairvolution: Her Hair, Her Story, Our History, 2021.
• Encounters with James Baldwin: Celebrating 100 years, 2024.