The Mixed Museum was founded in 2012 as a means to share more widely and permanently the findings of small British Academy-funded research project undertaken in 2007 by Drs Chamion Caballero and Peter Aspinall into official accounts and first-hand experiences of racial mixing in 20th century Britain. The project identified a range of material from national and local archives, including official documents, autobiographical recordings and photos and film materials, which furthered our understanding of how social perceptions of racial mixing and mixedness emerged during this period and the effect they had on the lives of mixed race people, couples and families themselves, as well as their place in shaping contemporary ideas and experiences.
The findings inspired and formed the foundation of the critically acclaimed BBC2 series Mixed Britannia (2011) and are further explored in the book Mixed Race Britain in The Twentieth Century (2018) published by Palgrave Macmillan.
A rising visibility.
The inventor of the seismograph resides in the Isle of Wight with his Japanese wife.
This 'Anglo-Chinese' wedding attracted great press attention
Discussions of selective breeding.
Eugenicist opposition to racial mixing
A Bristolian family
State warnings against mixed marriages
Discriminatory legislation
Supporting mixed race families in East London
The measuring of mixed race children
Caricaturing interracial mixing in 'the smart set'.
A celebrated screen depiction of interracial desire.
The beginning of investigations by officialdom in the post WW1-decades
The acclaimed composer of white British and Sierra Leoneon heritage dies of acute pneumonia.
Britain's first Black mayor.
Increasing vilification of Chinese communities in Britain
'Alien' British women
The war saw mixed race couples face new visibility and hostility
A mixed race family in the Rhondda Valley
Britain's first Army Infantry Officer of Black descent
Explosion of racial violence in nine of Britain's port cities
A small but visible population
The vilification of mixed race families in Liverpool.
Outsider and insider views of interracial mixing in East London
An affair on and off the stage
A royal marriage
Crowds celebrate the wedding of the popular Caribbean tipster
Musical stereotyping of 'Eurasian' women
Nancy Cunard's pamphlet on her relationship with Henry Crowder
The Society's official position on 'race mixing'
Damning commentary on mixed race families in port communities
A surprisingly neutral take in the Eugenics Review
A challenge to eugenicist stereotypes
WW2's influence on patterns and experiences of racial mixing
A glimpse into Cardiff's Muslim mixed families
New relationships and concerns
Destruction of Liverpudlian Anglo-Chinese families
A British woman jailed for marrying a black American GI
The 'Brown Baby problem' of WW2
Before, a woman who married an ‘alien’ lost her nationality.
The beginnings of mass in-migration from New Commonwealth countries
"All men belong to the same species…"
By the early 50s eugenics had lost all credibility in the scientific community,
Beautiful and revealing images record mixed race couples happily going about their ordinary lives
Collins was one of very few black scholars working in British universities at this time.
British crime drama
The 1960 memorandum asked about ‘intermixing, miscegenation and illegitimacy’
British film adaptation of a play by Shelagh Delaney
Ground-breaking 1964 television documentary
BBC documentary by Selwyn Roderick
The first community organisation in Britain to cater for the needs and interests of people in mixed racial/ethnic unions
Among married Asians, 5% of men and 2% of women were married to a white person in 1974
Lynott was the son of an Irish mother and an Afro-Guyanese father
The song by ska/pop band Madness was released as a single on November 14, 1980 and reached number 4 in the UK singles chart.
A study published in 1981 by Dr Susan Benson
Hostility to inter-marriage falls rapidly amongst cohorts born after the 1930s
Married on 20 October 1984 in Covent Garden London
British film directed by Stephen Frears
Directed by Stephen Frears, with a screenplay by Hanif Kureishi
A pioneering book by Anne Wilson
Short film by Ngozi Onwurah
BBC miniseries following two Leicester families
Autobiographical novel by Hanif Kureshi.
Around 230,000 persons gave mixed origin descriptions
Black British coming of age drama
Race and Racism in the Lives of Young People of Mixed Parentage
A collection of photographic images and oral testimony
British film directed by Mike Leigh
Served as the Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow
Dodi Al-Fayed, became romantically involved with Diana, Princess of Wales
British comedy-drama film,
Organisation for mixed-race individuals run by mixed race individuals
Novel by the British author Zadie Smith
661,034 persons identified as ‘Mixed’, 1.3% of the total population.
Poem by John Agard
It was later to be renamed ‘Mix-d:’ in 2009
British drama film written and directed by Shane Meadows
Over 100 mixed-race students from across the country joined us
Estimates indicate a ‘Mixed’ group of 986,600 persons
Ninth studio album released by the musician Tricky,
The ‘Mixed-Race’ Model competition
The UK ‘Mixed’ population will comfortably exceed one million persons
British film based on Emily Bronte’s nove
BBC2 celebrates the changes that have taken place in Britain
London Borough of Newham, one of the most multicultural boroughs in Britain and home to a large mixed race population, was one of six host boroughs