Dr Harold Moody

Dr Harold Moody was the subject of the Google Doodle on 1st September.   The image caught my eye as the designer intended, and I followed the link.

And then, I started reading Reni Eddo-Lodge's Why I am no longer talking to white people about race, and there he was again.

Moody was born in Jamaica, came to England to study medicine (at King's College London), and then worked in London as a general practitioner.   In 1931, he founded the League of Coloured Peoples, a civil rights organisation.

I could find nothing in medical journals about him, but did find this book chapter by David Killingray, published in Manchester Openhive.

And that linked Moody with another area of my life.   He was a Congregational Christian.   Congregational churches are each independent, with roots in 17th century England, when we broke with the Church of England because we wanted to have that independence to worship in the way we wanted.   Moody had attended a Congregational Church in Jamaica, and then in London, although the chapter does not say which London church.    He was chair of the London Missionary Society, and seems to have been on a list (real or in someone's head) of possible people to be chair of the Congregational Union, the national organisation of the time.   Moody sent a communication to the editors of the Journal of Negro History (Moody, H. (1933). Communications. The Journal of Negro History, 18(1), 92-101).  It reports an address he gave at Friends' House in London (headquarters of the Quakers),  describing the inaugural meeting of the League.  The League's inaugural meeting was held at Memorial Hall in London, which was the headquarters of the Congregational Union.    So Moody is definitely part of my church's heritage, but someone I had not come across before.

There is more about the League of Coloured Peoples on this page from the Open University series on the history of South Asians in Britain, "Making Britain", and this second page from the same project, which has a good reference list.  

The British Library have the objectives of the group.

And there is an article in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (subscription needed - the University of Leicester has one).

First in an occasional series of posts to mark Black History Month.   Watch for others!