My pal Gerlin Bean, who has died aged 85, was a number one mild of the British Black feminist motion. A founding member of OWAAD (Organisation of Ladies of African and Asian Descent), she was an efficient and persuasive organiser, fiercely dedicated to empowering her group.
Additionally a founder member in 1973 of the Brixton Black Ladies’s Group, Gerlin remained a key determine within the south London space for the subsequent decade. She helped arrange Sabaar Books, one of many first Black bookshops in Brixton, within the late Seventies, and, as a steering counsellor at Brixton School, was instrumental in securing creche amenities there that allowed numerous ladies to achieve entry to additional training. Previous to that, she had helped set up the WIPAG (West Indian Dad and mom’ Motion Group), which supplied nursery amenities and early years’ training for working moms in Lambeth.
Hers was considered one of two lone Black faces on the first Women’s Liberation Conference in Oxford in 1970. Gerlin was a dedicated Marxist whose activism encompassed Black, homosexual and girls’s liberation. As such, her politics have been genuinely intersectional.
Born in Hanover, Jamaica, she was the third of the seven kids of Ralph Bean, a farmer, and his spouse, Melgata (nee Spence). After finishing her secondary training at Manning’s college in Westmoreland, Gerlin travelled to the UK aged 18 to coach as a nurse at Bethnal Inexperienced normal hospital, and transferred to Warlingham Park psychiatric hospital in Surrey in 1961.
Nevertheless, her expertise of racism on the wards mixed with single parenthood following the delivery of her daughter, Jennifer, led to a rising political consciousness, and within the late 60s she left nursing and commenced youth work within the Seventies Espresso Bar on the Harrow Street. Her dedication to making sure younger Black individuals had a future earned her immediate respect.
After gaining a level in social science and administration on the London College of Economics (1978), Gerlin started working at Brixton School. In 1983, she left Britain to work for the CIIR (Catholic Institute of Worldwide Relations) within the newly impartial Zimbabwe, the place she helped organise volunteer medical doctors and academics. After returning to Jamaica in 1987, she performed an more and more influential position as director of 3D Tasks, an organisation in Spanish City devoted to supporting and empowering younger individuals with disabilities.
In 1997 she turned the chair of Youngsters First Company in Jamaica, and remained a board member till 2019. She returned to the UK in 2020 to reside with Jennifer.
I’m considered one of many ladies who would describe Gerlin as each a mentor and a task mannequin in these early days of the Black British civil rights motion. Our mutual involvement with the Black Liberator journal within the mid-70s, and with OWAAD, from its founding in 1978, led to a detailed and enduring friendship. A guide, Gerlin Bean: Mother of a Movement, by AS Francis, was printed in 2023.
Jennifer survives her, as do two grandchildren, Junior and Sharleen.
