BRIDGWATER and District Trades Union Council, supported by the Somerset African Caribbean Network and Somerset Film, has celebrated Black History Month with an exhibition and evening event.

Somerset during and after World War Two: The Black Experience and The Brown Babies display was held in the town's Engine Room.

The Brown Babies exhibition, based on the book by Professor Lucy Bland, ran for a week from Saturday (October 15).

The free Black History Month celebration event on Thursday (October 20) features with a buffet supper and focused on the stories of mixed-race people were born in the mid-1940s into the 1950s from their own perspectives.

The war and its immediate aftermath, when black American GIs were in Britain and the story of their children with the young white women they befriended was seen in David Greene's talk 'My father was a black US GI'.

Bridgwater TUC secretary Dave told the story of black American GI Leroy Henry, and how he escaped a United States court martial judicial execution at Shepton Mallet jail for a crime he did not commit.

The arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks in June 1948, with more than over 400 Caribbean immigrants, shaped modern Britain and was a milestone in the Black British contribution to this country and the broader post-war migration from across the Commonwealth.

Susann Savidge, from the Somerset African Caribbean Network, summarised the impact of this Windrush Generation and told her own story about growing up in Yeovil, once described as "The whitest town in Britain".

Dave Chapple, a Bridgwater trades unionist and black music DJ, premiered a World War Two-era swing, boogie and rhythm and blues record session with a difference - all records were original 1940s shellac 78rpms.