After creating the “Inspiring Embodiment and Empowerment” Series for the Yogamatters Community, Stacie CC Graham and Jonelle Lewis have reignited their partnership to bring us this 4-part blog series of Black British women that inspire through their action and service. Over the next 4 weeks Jonelle and Stacie will introduce us to the history and work of an extraordinary Black British woman, and connect it to our understanding of yoga. Each week will also include a recorded guided practice, that connects with the week’s theme and Yogic Principle, and a Spotify playlist that will help you feel inspired and empowered by these stories and practices.
In modern day yoga we spend time considering the Yamas and Niyamas to guide our conduct as yogis. These observances and restraints form a moral code for how we practice yoga and how we behave when we are off the mat.
Social justice and racial equity are currently being spoken about in every part of people’s lives. Social justice is intrinsic to the practice of yoga. As practitioners we have the tools to ‘do the work’ of becoming anti-racist. We can use our practice of Dhrti (धृति) to have the capacity for meaningful action in the face of oppression.
Dhrti (धृति): Fortitude, perseverance with the aim to reach the goal.
London activist Olive Morris is one of our Black History Month inspirations who embodies this concept of Dhrti (धृति): Fortitude/ perseverance. Olive’s goal as a community organiser and activist was to lead by example in all she did to work towards racial equity for theBlack community in Britain.
While Olive only lived until age 27, she had an invaluable impact on her community and the fight against injustice and inequality in Britain. She was one of the founding members of the Black Women Group (BWG), Black Woman’s Mutual Aid Group and the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent (OWAAD). She was a member of the British arm of the Black Panther Party and worked with different grassroots organisations in London and Manchester. She was relentless in her work to empower and uplift marginalised people of every race. She represents the spirit of fortitude and perseverance of Black women who have worked to make Britain a more equitable place.
Olive emigrated from Jamaica to Britain as a part of the Windrush generation. She came with her parents at the age of eight. While in school she experienced all the inequalities and injustices of the British education system. She left at sixteen with no qualification; undeterred she went on to higher education.
At 17 years of age Olive carried out her first conscious political act. In 1969 she went to the aid of a Nigerian diplomat who was being harassed in the street by the police. His crime was being Black while driving an expensive car, which the police found suspicious enough to arrest him. As a result of her intervention, Olive was arrested and taken to the local police station, where she was made to strip and was brutally assaulted. The incident did not intimidate her; it made her more determined to fight against racism and injustice.
In 1975, she went to Manchester University to study for a social science degree. This was an important step for Olive, who believed in education for the people. Going to university was not a status symbol, but an example to many young Black people of how to fight and win against a system which tries to push us to the bottom of the education pile and force us to compete against each other.
Unlike many students, Olive did not separate her work at the university from the struggles which were being waged in the rest of the community. In her work with the Manchester Black Women’s Co-operative and the Black Women’s Mutual Aid Group, she was committed to furthering education rights for Black people. She campaigned with Black mothers for better schooling for their children and helped to set up a supplementary school and a Black bookshop in the area.
Soon after she returned to Brixton, she began to suffer the symptoms of the cancer which killed her within the year. In her fight against leukaemia, she displayed the same courage she had shown throughout her lifetime. By the time she died on 12 July 1979, she had already made her mark. She was mourned by all sections of the Black community, and by many others from outside it whose lives she had touched. Those who knew her were left with her vision of a new society, and the lasting memory of one more Black woman who had the fortitude to fight back and persevere.
To practice yoga on and off the mat we need Dhrti (धृति) to show up for ourselves and for our communities. Yoga’s essence is about collective healing and liberation; Olive Morris’s life was a testament to those principles.
Try this week’s guided practice:
You can also listen to this week’s Spotify playlist for inspiration and empowerment here.
The post Black British Women Who Inspire: Olive Morris appeared first on Yogamatters Blog.
