The Liverpool Black Sisters changed the lives of countless Merseyside women Life wasn't easy for women in 1970s Britain. While it may have been a decade of fabulous fashion and incredible music, we still had a long way to go in terms of our social culture. Women endured sexist 'banter', workplace discrimination, pay inequality and far worse besides.
Black women suffered double discrimination, encountering racism as well as sexism. For Toxteth -born Bea Freeman, thinking about those days can be painful. Speaking to the ECHO , Bea recalled going for a job at a shipping office in Liverpool in the late 70s.
"When I went there," she said, "the guy asked me where I was from. I said to him, I live up the road. And he said, 'Oh - I was told an African woman was coming for the job'.
Just because I had a black face! It was hurtful. I'm not African, I'm a fifth generation, British-born woman. This type of thing was happening all the time.
For anyone with an L8 postcode, it was very difficult." It was moments like this that motivated Bea, a film-maker and historian, to join a ground-breaking activist organisation that had her interests at heart: the Liverpool Black Sisters. The Sisters were formed in 1979, growing out of the Liverpool Black Women’s Group.
They formed in the basement of the Charles Wootten Centre, Upper Parliament Street, and later found a more permanent base in the L8 Law Centre, Princes Road. Bea said: "We knew the system was wrong and it was against us. So we were se.
