Did you know that the first ever Black mayor of any British town was in Norfolk?
Allan Glaisyer Minns was one of 10 children of John and Ophelia Minns, originally from Inagua in the Bahamas.
Allan, his brother Pembroke, sister Ophelia and his five children, came to England and lived as part of Thetford’s middle-class society. In 1904, Allan became the first ever Black and mixed-race mayor of Thetford after playing a very important part of the community.
Minns was born in the Bahamas, then a British colony, a quarter of a century after the Slavery Abolition Act went through the Westminster Parliament. His grandmother had been enslaved, and his uncles were born into slavery.
A good education in the Bahamas then medical training in England, allied with his own hard work, allowed him to build an important role in Victorian and Edwardian society, becoming a respected physician and a leader of his community.
Allan decided to become active in politics. In 1903, he was elected to Thetford Borough Council. Just one year later, he was chosen by his fellow councillors to be mayor, a position he held for two years (1904-5 and 1905). He was the deputy mayor for the next two years.
In 1914, John Archer became Mayor of Battersea. Many people thought he was the first Black person to become a British mayor and the claim still appears as fact in some books.
Even at the time, however, some authorities recognised that Minns had the prior claim. The US-published Negro Year Book for 1914 noted Archer’s election, writing: “This is the second time in the history of that country [Britain] that ‘a man of colour’ has been elected mayor of a town. In 1904, Mr Allen Glaser Minns, a coloured man from the West Indies, was elected mayor of the borough of Thetford, Norfolk.”
Over the last 20 years, Minns’ story has become much better known, achieving full recognition in 2016 when he appeared in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography for the first time in an article written by Richard Maguire.
Black History Month is a fantastic time for us to celebrate Allan Glaisyer Minns and his extraordinary story.
The inspiration here is that racial prejudice appeared not to have been an issue in Allan nor his family’s lives. Their racial background made no difference in their dealings with friends, colleagues, neighbours and even political opponents.
Integration, acceptance and standing together in stomping out prejudices in all its forms is the way forward.
