Olive Morris: The Black feminist icon and ‘rabble rouser’ whose life was tragically cut short

Olive Morris was not the sort of person to shy away from confrontation.

‘She spoke her mind; you couldn’t mess with Olive. If she didn’t like something, then you would know,’ her friend Danny DaCosta once said.

Olive’s instinct to fight injustice was laid bare on November 15, 1969, when she intervened during the arrest of Clement Gomwalk, a Nigerian diplomat accused of stealing his own car.

As she walked towards Desmond’s Hip City in Brixton – one of London’s first Black-owned record stores – she noticed a crowd had surrounded a white Mercedes and a police van, with people accusing the authorities of brutality towards the diplomat.

As she got caught up in the confrontation,Olive, then aged 17 and just over 5ft tall, was grabbed by both legs and shoved headfirst into the police van.

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