Google likes to change its logo to acknowledge holidays, events and notable figures on the search engine’s homepage.

Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Ella Fitzgerald, and Scottish scientist Mary Somerville have all been immortalised in this way.

Today, Google Doodle focuses on activist Olive Morris.

Born in Jamaica in 1952, Olive moved to London with her family when she was nine.

On November 15 1969, Nigerian diplomat Clement Gomwalk parked his car as he went to buy records, but police wrongly suspected him of stealing the vehicle. It is reported that police beat him before his arrest. The incident led to protests.

Olive, who was 17, was drawn into the protests after trying to defend a friend was hurt and broke their arm.

She was also beaten and arrested. She recalled how she was slapped around, grabbed by the neck and kicked in the chest by officers and humiliated with racist abuse and threatened with rape.

© Remembering Olive Collective/British Library Archives Olive added a note on the other side of this picture: ‘Taken at about 10pm on 15 Nov ’64 after police had beaten me up (at King’s College Hospital)’

A founder of the British Black Panther Movement, later British Black Panthers, the incident would only further her fight against racial discrimination and for equality in housing, employment and education.

When it disbanded in 1973, Olive co-founded the Brixton Black Women’s Group and the Organisation of Women of Asian and Afrcian Descent.

She helped open a squat on Railton Road in Brixton which became a hub of community groups and activism.

In 1975, Olive moved to Manchester to study economics and social science at Manchester University.

The move to the city led to her involvement with the Manchester Black Women’s Co-operative in Moss Side, which sought to address employment inequality in Manchester and help train black women for office-based work.

© Remembering Olive Collective/British Library Archives Olive was a co-founder of the British Black Panther Movement, which later became the British Black Panthers

Her work with the Co-Operative also helped to improve the conditions and quality of education for black children in the city by campaigning for a supplementary school and a black bookshop.

In 1977, Olive visited China as part of a trip organised by the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding.

She also visited Morocco, Algeria, Spain, Hong Kong, France and Spain.

During her time in Spain, Olive became ill and was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma when she returned to the UK.

She died at just 27, on July 12 1979 at St Thomas’s Hospital in London.

© Remembering Olive Collective/British Library Archives Olive Morris was a founder and member of a number of activist groups, including the Manchester Black Women’s Co-operative

In 1980, the Manchester Black Women’s Co-operative became the Abasindi Co-operative, based on St Mary’s Street in Moss Side.

A Zulu word for ‘survivor’, The Abasindi ran drop-in centres for the elderly, organisations focused on Sickle Cell Anaemia and a Saturday school for young people.

Performing arts and hair braiding were also celebrated and available at the Abasindi.[…]

Continue reading: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newsmanchester/who-was-olive-morris-google-doodle-celebrates-68th-birthday-of-co-founder-of-the-british-black-panthers/ar-BB160ywd