Clementina Black – Commemorative Plaque Unveiling ceremony
2.15pm on Saturday 7th September
51 Ship Street, Brighton (outside the premises of FatFace Ltd)
There are no shortages of notable women associated with the city of Brighton & Hove. Yet less than a quarter of the commemorative Blue Plaques denote women. Brighton & Hove Women’s History Group have been campaigning to address this and recently managed to get a Blue Plaque for suffragette Minnie Turner who ran a guest house where suffragettes would recouperate after spells in prison, hunger-strikes and force-feeding.
The second Blue Plaque of the campaign will commemorate Clementina Black: Suffragist, Social Reformer, Trade Unionist, Writer and Journalist. This incredible women was born on 27 July 1853 at 45 Ship Street. Beginning her career as a writer of romantic fiction, she became an active campaigner for better working conditions for women, collaborating on the book Married Women’s Work [1915] with Margaret Bondfield, who became a Labour MP and the first women’s minister in Government. This work led to her becoming an advocate of the minimum wage for which she campaigned successfully in the early 20th Century.
Active in the women’s suffrage movement, by 1911 she was the Vice President of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) and became the Editor of it’s publication, The Common Cause.
Clementina Black was a tireless, lifelong campaigner for women’s rights and rightly deserves to be commemorated in the city where she was born and raised.
This event will take place at Ship Street [Fat Face] at 2.30. All welcome. Speakers: Gerry Holloway [B&HWHG], Caroline Lucas [MP], Nancy Platt [Leader of Brighton & Hove Council], Frances O’Grady [Gen. Sec, TUC]. Please arrive by 2.15