In the mid-1980s he invited Angela Davis, Winnie Mandela, Jesse Jackson and Ray Charles to talk to communities across the country. Thus began an enormous, ongoing, consciousness-changing event
One morning in late 1985, Akyaaba Addai-Sebo walked into work and had a casual conversation with a colleague that would change the trajectory of British society. Then 35 years old, he was working at the Greater London Council (GLC) as a coordinator of special projects in the Ethnic Minorities Unit.
“Elizabeth, the secretary of the principal race relations adviser Ansel Wong, came to work looking very downcast,” he recalls. “I asked her: ‘Elizabeth, What’s wrong?’ She said: ‘Last night I was putting my son Marcus to bed and he asked, ‘Why can’t I be white?’ As she told me the story, she was crying. ‘I named my son after Marcus Garvey,’ Elizabeth told me, ‘And here he is, just six years old questioning his identity. I’ve failed my son.’”
