Celebrating Black History Month

This month is black history month. Every October, there is an annual celebration of the history, achievements and contributions of black people in the UK.

Here over the month we highlight the lives and achievements of iconic black people from the Midlands:

Reverend Eve Pitts

Eve Pitts was ordained as a deacon in 1989. In 1994, she was one of the first black women ordained priest in the Church of England, and went on to be the first black woman to become a vicar.

Her first church was in Bartley Green Birmingham, then she moved to a church in Kings Norton. After Campaigning against discrimination she was offered a parish in Highters Heath Birmingham where she stayed for more than a decade.

She considers that history should be remembered and commemorated, including the transatlantic slave trade. Otherwise:

‘it will continue to undermine our own understanding of who God has meant us to be … No matter how successful we are — and some of us are very successful — there will be something that is missing there. There will be a wall. We will not be able to fly without a clear understanding of who we are, warts and all, and of the slave trade’.