Join the Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park Team for an evening walk and talk in the Cemetery Park, based out of the Soanes Centre, highlighting the life of Zilpha Elaw with Professor Kimberly Blockett from the University of Delaware.
Zilpha Elaw was one of the first Black women to preach publicly, apart of the Methodist tradition, in the United States and in Britain. Born free in Pennsylvania in 1790. She came to England in 1840, preached to crowds large enough that local papers reported on them, published her Memoirs in 1846 making her one of the first Black women to publish a book in Britain. She lived and died in Bow, in 1873.
She's buried here. We know roughly where, but there's no headstone, no marker, no inscription.
We'll gather at the Lodge at 5.15pm and walk out at 5.30pm to stand on the ground where she lies, discussing a broad overview of cemetery's history along the way. There's nothing to see when we get there, and that's the point. Back at the Soanes Centre at 6pm, Dr. Blockett joins us by video from the United States to talk about her new book on Elaw's life. From 6.30pm we open the floor: what kind of memorial Zilpha Elaw should have, who gets remembered in stone and who doesn't, and how we raise the money to change that. We want your ideas in the room, and we'll launch the fundraising appeal on the night.
Come be part of this historically rich evening where we co-develop critical and creative forms of memorialisation!
This event will take place at The Soanes Centre in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park
Free - book your spot
Time 5.15 pm walk start. 6pm talk starts. 7pm end.
Email contact@fothcp.org