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From
the beginning of the 20th century, black people from
the West Indies began to arrive in very small numbers in Oxford,
usually as male Jamaican scholars at the University, and an ever-increasing
number of African scholars have joined the University up to the
present time. But the biggest influx of people of African origin
to Oxford began in the 1950s and 1960s, when labourers were sought
in Oxford to fill the gaps in the employment market left by local
workers seeking higher wages in the motor car industry. With the
Race Relations Act in 1965, West Indians began to be employed in
the car industry as well.
The
black community first congregated in the Cowley Road area of east
Oxford, where the West Indian Day Centre and Christian Life Centre
and an active black community are still located. In the 1960s Blackbird
Leys, a huge area of farmland south of Oxford, began to be developed
as a major extension to the city, partly to compensate for the razing
of the St Ebbe's parish in the town centre to make way for
a shopping centre and multi-storey carpark, and partly to create
housing for the growing immigrant community in close proximity to
the British Leyland car works.
The
car works have now nearly vanished, but Blackbird Leys remains a
main focus of the African-Caribbean community in Oxford.
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