Becoming Black: A 2-Tone Story

"I was never going to be a nice little white girl" she says.

 

Instead, she became an underground star, had hit records with the 2-Tone band The Selector, became a style-icon, an actor, a TV Presenter - and author.

 

Whilst Margaret Thatcher was reshaping Britain and promoting her very own particular vision of what it meant to be British, in the urban jungle of Coventry, a young woman whose image couldn't be more different than Maggie's, was presenting a radically different vision of what it meant to be British 

 

Belinda Magnus, born on 23 October 1953 was given away as the baby of a white unmarried mother and an unknown black father. She was adopted by a white family and re-named Pauline Vickers.  Growing up in a completely white neighbourhood as the only person of colour, she experienced first-hand the often racist attitudes of the time.

 

She came to the Bureau to talk about all that, how she overcame it, her life as a star of the 2-tone musical scene with her band Selecter, and how, along the way, she became Pauline Black 

 

For more on Pauline

 

Image by Dean Chalkley

 

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