The Liverpool & Slavery Walking Tour was developed and inspired by our Dorothy Kuya Archive Project, in collaboration with National Museums Liverpool. During the project our team revealed the extent of Dorothy’s involvement in the establishment of the Atlantic Slave Trade Gallery, Slavery Remembrance Day and the International Slavery Museum. Along with Liverpool activist and historian Eric Scott Lynch (1932-2022), Dorothy delivered slavery walking tours in collaboration with NML in the mid 1990s. It is local Black activists like Dorothy and Eric that have played an integral role in how Liverpool remembers and commemorates its heavy involvement in the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
On this tour we explore the many sites and streets with direct links to the Transatlantic Slave Trade in Liverpool city centre. We discuss the depth of the city’s connections to the trade of enslaved Africans and the goods they produced long after its abolition in Britain. This tour also considers the legacies of the Atlantic Slave Trade, the origins of anti-Black racism and white supremacy, which in the 18th and 19th centuries were seen as justifications for horrific oppression and continue to encourage racial hatred violence in the present day.
The tour will be led by Nasra Elliott who is an Engagement Producer at National Museums Liverpool’s, International Slavery Museum and a community historian based in Liverpool. Her work focuses on community engagement, public history, and ethical collaboration, with a particular interest in Liverpool’s Black histories and its connections to transatlantic slavery, empire, and their contemporary legacies. At the International Slavery Museum, she develops research-informed, co-produced programmes that bring together archival research, community knowledge, and lived experience to create accessible public history.
Her practice is grounded in decolonial approaches to heritage, participatory governance, and the role of museums in addressing historical injustice. Alongside her institutional role, she is an independent researcher
Starting at The Pump House, Albert Dock, Liverpool L3 4AN, the tour will then cover the L1 and L2 districts, ending at Liverpool Town Hall.
Starting point: The Pump House, Albert Dock, Liverpool L3 4AN
End point: Liverpool Town Hall, High St, Liverpool, L2 3SW