But now a mural will be painted on one of its outer walls depicting Malcolm X along with Claudia Jones – the campaigning journalist who helped launch the Notting Hill carnival and Britain’s first black newspaper – and Avtar Singh Jouhl, the anti-racism activist who invited him to Smethwick.
On 12 February 1965, the black American activist Malcolm X visited Smethwick, in the West Midlands after what is remembered as the most racist election campaign the UK has ever seen.
Jagwant Johal of Birmingham Race Impact Group said: “The story of how and why Malcolm X found himself in Smethwick is one of international Black unity and solidarity.
Days before arriving in Smethwick, Malcolm X had visited Selma, Alabama, where Martin Luther King was being held in the city jail after campaigning for equal voting rights.
It followed years of grassroots campaigning against discrimination in the UK – from Len Johnson challenging a Manchester colour bar in the 1950s, to Paul Stephenson refusing to leave a venue in Bristol until he was served, a year after helping to lead 1963’s Bristol bus boycott which fought racist employment policies.
