Amelia King

{{Short description|British fancy-box maker and Women's Land Army volunteer}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} {{Infobox person | honorific_prefix = | name = Amelia King | honorific_suffix = | native_name = | native_name_lang = | image = Amelia King.jpg | image_size = | alt = | caption = | birth_name = Amelia Elizabeth King | birth_date = {{Birth date|1917|06|25}} | birth_place = Stepney, London | disappeared_date =  | disappeared_place = | disappeared_status = | death_date = {{Death-date and age|1995|1917}} | death_place = Whitechapel, London | death_cause = | body_discovered = | resting_place = | resting_place_coordinates =  | monuments = | other_names = | citizenship = British | education = | alma_mater = | occupation = | years_active = | employer = | organization = | agent = | known_for = | notable_works = | style =

| net_worth =  | height =  | television = | title = | term = | predecessor = | successor = | party = | movement = | opponents = | boards = | criminal_charge =  | criminal_penalty = | criminal_status = | spouse = | partner = | children = | parents = | relatives = | callsign = | awards = | signature = | signature_alt = | signature_size = | module = | module2 = | module3 = | module4 = | module5 = | module6 = | website =  | footnotes = }} '''Amelia King''' (25 June 1917 – 1995) was a British woman who was refused entry into the Women's Land Army, during World War II, because she was black. This example of racial segregation in the UK was debated in the House of Commons and was covered in newspapers internationally including ''The Chicago Defender''. The decision would eventually be reversed.

== Early life == Amelia Elizabeth King was born in Limehouse in London's East End on 25 June 1917.<ref name=":3">{{cite book|last=Bourne|first=Stephen|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qJA7AwAAQBAJ|title=The Motherland Calls: Britain's Black Servicemen & Women 1939-45|date=1 September 2012|publisher=The History Press|isbn=978-0-75249-071-7|chapter=Amelia King & The Women's Land Army|author-link=Stephen Bourne (writer)}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{cite book|last=Romain|first=Gemma|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BdYsDwAAQBAJ|title=Race, Sexuality and Identity in Britain and Jamaica: The Biography of Patrick Nelson, 1916-1963|date=7 September 2017|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|isbn=978-1-47258-864-7|page=108}}</ref> Her father, Henry King, born in Georgetown, British Guiana, worked as a stoker in the Merchant Navy, and her brother Fitzherbert King served in the Royal Navy.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J8rVeu2go8IC|title=Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain|first=Peter|last=Fryer|author-link=Peter Fryer|date=1 January 1984|publisher=University of Alberta|via=Google Books|isbn=978-0-86104-749-9}}</ref> She worked as a fancy box maker before World War II and volunteered to join the Women's Land Army in September 1943.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w7ZMxc25xB0C|title=Bonds of Empire: West Indians and Britishness from Victoria to Decolonization|first=Anne Spry|last=Rush|date=9 June 2011|publisher=OUP Oxford|via=Google Books|isbn=978-0-19-958855-8}}</ref>

== Women's Land Army == left|thumb|Leaflet for a meeting at Conway Hall to protest racial discrimination, October 1943 King was refused entry to the Land Army by its Essex County branch committee because it was believed it would be difficult to place her, as there would be objections due to her ethnicity.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2">{{Cite book|last1=Ginn|first1=Peter|last2=Goodman|first2=Ruth|last3=Langlands|first3=Alex|title=Wartime Farm|date=24 September 2012|isbn=978-1-84533-740-7|location=London|oclc=893653084}}</ref><ref name=":4">{{cite web|last=Latherow|first=Tamisan|date=18 August 2020|title=Breaking the Colour Bar - The little-known and extraordinary story of one particular land girl|url=https://merl.reading.ac.uk/news-and-views/2020/08/breaking-the-colour-bar/|access-date=30 November 2020|website=Museum of English Rural Life}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Diaspora|url=http://www.understandingslavery.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=314&Itemid=226|access-date=30 November 2020|website=Understanding Slavery Initiative}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.chronicleworld.org/tomsite/archive2/01_HI_FD/11_93hom.htm |title=Blacks and the blitz: Britain's best kept wartime secret|access-date=2013-10-30 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131101103031/http://www.chronicleworld.org/tomsite/archive2/01_HI_FD/11_93hom.htm |archive-date=2013-11-01 |url-status=dead |website=Chronicle World}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Wu0qQdMCdvIC|title=A Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African American Studies|first=Floyd Windom|last=Hayes|date=1 January 2000|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|via=Google Books|isbn=978-0-939693-52-8}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Lindsey|first1=Lydia|last2=Wilson|first2=Carlton E.|date=1 January 1994|title=Spurring a Dialogue to Place the African European Experience Within the Context of an Afrocentric Philosophy|journal=Journal of Black Studies|volume=25|issue=1|pages=41–61|doi=10.1177/002193479402500103|jstor=2784413|s2cid=144321312}}</ref> With support from the Holborn Trades Council,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Trades Union Congress |url=https://wdc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/tav/id/4628 |access-date=2024-09-11 |website=wdc.contentdm.oclc.org |language=en}}</ref> King presented the issue to her member of parliament, Walter Edwards, who raised the issue of racism within the Land Army at the House of Commons.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{cite web|date=1943|title=Londoners' Protest Meeting Against Racial Discrimination|url=https://wdc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/tav/id/4628|access-date=30 November 2020|website=Warwick Digital Collections}}</ref> This, along with another racially-motivated incident that occurred within the same week in which cricketer Learie Constantine was denied accommodation at a London hotel, attracted widespread controversy and criticism and brought the 'Colour Bar' into focus.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Werran|first=Kate|title=An American uprising in Second World War England : mutiny in the duchy|date=19 July 2020|isbn=978-1-5267-5955-9|location=Yorkshire|oclc=1147973551}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KtlRAQAAIAAJ|title=Britain in the Second World War: A Social History|first=Harold L.|last=Smith|date=15 June 1996|publisher=Manchester University Press|via=Google Books|isbn=978-0-7190-4493-9}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Kushner|first=Antony Robin Jeremy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ykQoh5ZepmsC|title=We Europeans?: Mass-observation, 'race' and British Identity in the Twentieth Century|date=1 January 2004|publisher=Ashgate|isbn=978-0-7546-0206-4|via=Google Books}}</ref>

In an interview with George Padmore, published in ''The Chicago Defender'', King reflected "I said to them, if I'm not good enough to work on the land, then I am not good enough to make munitions. No one has ever suggested that my father and brother were not good enough to fight for the freedom of England."<ref name=":0" />

The refusal was reversed and King was able to formally join the Women's Land Army in October 1943.<ref name=":2" /><ref>{{cite web|url=https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/written-answers/1943/oct/12/womens-land-army|title=Women's Land Army |access-date=30 November 2020|date=12 October 1943|website=Parliamentary Debates (Hansard)}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Smith|first1=Graham A.|title=Jim Crow on the home front (1942–1945)|journal=Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies|date=30 June 2010|volume=8|issue=3|pages=317–328|doi=10.1080/1369183X.1980.9975641}}</ref> She worked at Frith Farm in Wickham, Hampshire until 1944.<ref name=":3" /><ref name=":4" />

== Later life == King died at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel in 1995, aged 78.<ref name=":3" />

== References == {{reflist}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:King, Amelia}} Category:People from Stepney Category:20th-century Black British women Category:20th-century Black British people Category:1995 deaths Category:1917 births Category:Women's Land Army members of World War II Category:British women in World War II Category:Military personnel from the London Borough of Tower Hamlets