Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) refused to allow Mary Seacole (1805-1881) to work as one of her nurses in the Crimean War because of her colour. The undaunted Mary Seacole made her own way to the Crimea and set up a hotel. Which served as a “mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers”.

Mary Seacole House is a mental health charity and resource service set up to offer support and advice in emotional and practical matters, primarily for BAMER (Black, Asian, Minority, Ethnic and Refugee) communities, however they work with all communities across Merseyside.

The Statue was torn down during the uprising in 1981 as it was known that Huskisson was a supporter of slavery despite his opposition to the slave Trade. Discussions on what to put in place of the deposed statue led to the community lead Mandella 8 initiative. Its initial vision is to see a permanent artwork that functions as a unique performance, conversation and contemplation space established at a Toxteth Liverpool 8 heritage site, to celebrate, commemorate and pursue the legacy of Nelson Mandela’s outstanding achievement for humanity.

Opened in 1927 the cinema was closed in 1964. The dance hall also operated into the 1960’s when it became a bingo hall for a short time before becoming a second-hand furniture store.  Like many local dance halls, for much of its lifespan the Rialto operated what was called the colour bar, whereby Black visitors were excluded. The building was destroyed in the uprising of 1981.

Black people have lived in and around the Toxteth area since the late eighteenth century a time when the area was still predominantly rural. St James Church that stands on Upper Parliament Street was opened in 1775 and would serve for much of its history as the parish church of Toxteth. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries many people of African descent were baptised there. One of the entries in the baptism register reads:

‘9 March 1792 James Thomas (A Negro) Was Baptised; With the Consent and Approbation of His Master Thomas Aspinall Esq.’

The parish records of St James Church also show the cosmopolitan nature of the black presence in Liverpool during the period with people being baptised at the church who had come to Liverpool from various places in Africa and the Americas:

• 10 September 1783 ‘Peter Sailsbury a negro from Baltimore, Maryland’
• 13 July 1784 ‘Isaac Galloway a negro from Africa’
• 22 March 1785 ‘John Jones a Negro Native of New York in America’
• 3 March 1785 ‘George Butler Native of Anamaboe in Africa’
• 10 May 1785 ‘Ebenzer Amos Negro native of Charles Town North Carolina’
• 5 February 1786 ‘Jemmy Africa, Negro, Native of Gold Coast, Africa’
• 2 July 1786 ‘Mary Lewis, Negro, Native of St. Vincent’
• 10 October 1786 ‘Thomas Neptune, Negro Native of Tortola’

By the early nineteenth century St James baptism records provide clear evidence that Toxteth was becoming the home of black people.

As well as black people being baptised at the church, the graveyard of St James is also the final resting place of some of Liverpool’s most notorious slave traders; including James Penny, Thomas Aspinall and Moses Benson. Inside the building there are memorial tablets to Jacob Aemilius Irving, an owner of plantations in Jamaica and Edward Grayson, slaver and shipbuilder who was killed in a duel in 1804.

In St James Gardens, a cemetery located at the rear of the cathedral, many Liverpool slave traders and plantation owners were interred. Benjamin Arthur Heywood, Peter Whitfield Brancker and Charles Lawrence, to name a few, are all buried in the grounds.

There is also the memorial of George Harwood. George Harwood was a boatswain (bosun) on the CSS Alabama (the boatswain serves as the go-between linking the crew's duties and the officers' orders).

In the early days of the American Civil War, Britain, and Liverpool in particular, was sympathetic to the Southern cause due in no small way to their links with cotton and slavery. The unofficial home port of the Confederate overseas fleet was Liverpool. Confederate Commander James Dunwoody Bulloch was based in the city. The city provided ships, crews, munitions and provisions of war.

The Alabama was built in 1862 for the Confederate States Navy at Birkenhead, Wirral. All-together, she burned 65 Union vessels of various types, most of them merchant ships. She was sunk in June 1864 by the USS Kearsarge at the Battle of Cherbourg outside the port of Cherbourg, France.

This memorial in St James' Gardens, Liverpool, is a bit of a curiosity. It gives his birth date as 183, says he was in the Confederate States Army, rather than Navy, and incorrectly spells " Alabama "

George Canning (11 April 1770 – 8 August 1827) was a British Tory statesman. He held various senior cabinet positions under numerous prime ministers, including two important terms as Foreign Secretary, finally becoming Prime Minister in 1827. 

He became and opponent of the slave trade but a supporter of slavery itself. Canning’s Resolutions of 1823 had mandated the reform of slavery rather than its abolition, instead he argued against the use if the whip in the fields and of the flogging of women, and the recognition of marriage between enslaved people. The Resolutions never became effective in the colonies because of the resistance of the slave-owners. 

One of the best examples of the enduring legacy of slavery in Liverpool can be seen in the Anglican Cathedral. Although the cathedral is a totally twentieth-century building, inside there is a memorial to a merchant, Richard Watt (1724-1796) who died in 1796. His descendant, Adelaide Watt, donated £2000 for the building of the cathedral and also paid for the erection of the bishop’s throne/chair (cathedra) at a cost of £1200. In acknowledging the role her ancestor had played in creating the wealth her family enjoyed she had a memorial inscribed in his name that can still be seen next to the cathedra. Richard Watt had made his fortune in Jamaica buying and selling enslaved people and the goods they produced, he also owned slave plantations and invested in slaving voyages that sailed out of Liverpool. His wealth bought him estates at Broadgreen, Speke and Bishop Burton in Yorkshire. At the time of Watt's purchase of Speke, the hall was derelict and the tenant farmers were using the now Grade I listed building to house their livestock. At his death in 1796, Richard was one of the richest men in the country and it was the wealth the family made from slavery that saved Speke Hall from destruction.

There are other memorials to slave trading families that can be found in the Anglican Cathedral. The Lady Chapel was paid for by two Liverpool families, the Earles and Langtons, earlier generations of both had engaged in the slave trade and went on to intermarry. There is a memorial window in the Lady Chapel that were commissioned by the Blundell family, another of Liverpool’s slave trading dynasties.

The Wapping Railway Tunnel passes under Cathedral Mount on its way up from Liverpool docks to Edge Hill train station, which was built to carry slave produced cotton to Manchester in vast quantities.

Street named after Admiral George Brydges Rodney, 1st Baron Rodney (1718-1792) He is best known for his victory over the French at the battle of the Saintes in 1782, which gave Britain naval supremacy in the Caribbean thus securing the safe trade routes to the sugar plantations.