The Melba Wilson collection spans over 40 years of Melba Wilson’s work in national and regional mental health programmes alongside her involvement in the Black Women’s Movement, including her membership in the Brixton Black Women’s Group (BWG), a ground-breaking socialist feminist organisation (1973-1985).
Our researcher-in-residence, Miranda Armstrong has produced this exhibition which looks outwards from Melba Wilson’s political and personal practise. The exhibition focuses on Black women’s experiences of motherhood and resistance in the 1970s, exploring how Black mothers at that time fought on multiple fronts for access to social services which would better both their lives and the lives of their children.
When looking back at the work of the BWG in an oral history interview, former member Gail Lewis reflects how it was Melba Wilson who fought for the importance of sharing domestic experiences, in order to ‘begin to discern the patterns in the domain of the so-called private that come to be common for Black women living in south London at that time’. Using the papers of Melba Wilson alongside a range of materials within our archive collections, Miranda Armstrong takes up Melba Wilson’s long-standing invitation.
