Olive Morris (1952 - 1979)

Thu Jun 26, 1952

Image

Olive Morris, born on this day in 1952, was a Jamaican Black Panther, squatter’s rights activist, and founder of the Brixton Black Women’s Group who died prematurely from illness at the age of 27. When Morris was nine years old, she and her brother, Basil, left their maternal grandmother in Jamaica and joined her parents in Lavender Hill, South London.

On November 15th, 1969, Morris was beaten and sexually harassed by London police for interfering when they were beating Nigerian diplomat Clement Gomwalk for existing while black outside “Desmond’s Hip City”, Brixton’s first black records store. Basil described her injuries from the incident, saying that he “could hardly recognize her face, they beat her so badly”.

Olive later became a member of the youth section of the British Black Panther Movement (later called the Black Workers Movement), along with activists such as Linton Kwesi Johnson, Clovis Reid and Farrukh Dhondy. Olive was also a founding member of the Brixton Black Women’s Group.

Morris also squatted at 121 Railton Road, Brixton in 1973. This squat became a hub of political activism and hosted community groups such as Black People Against State Harassment. The building was also the site of the Sabarr Bookshop, one of the first black community bookshops in the area. The site subsequently became an anarchist project, known as the 121 Centre, which existed until its eviction in 1999.

In 1979, Morris died prematurely from non-Hodgkinson’s lymphoma at the age of 27.