Ted Marriott's transcript
Content warning. Ted talks about racial segregation in the USA.
[00:00] My name is Ted Marriott. I'm originally from a small village called Tostock, which is between Stowmarket and Bury St Edmunds, and currently live between there with my family and in West London.
So my grandfather was an African American GI who came to East Anglia during the Second World War. He was based in and worked in and around Tostock, the same village where I live and my family still live. So yeah, he came over during the Second World War. He met my grandma, Olive and he.. they were one of the many interracial couples at that time. You know, African American and young white British woman. And yes, they met. And my father was born in November of 1944 so that was our.. that's my connection.
[01:06]
And didn't know… we didn't know a huge amount about him, my grandfather, he left England to go to France before the war finished, and then he went back to the US. He was originally from Louisiana but then he moved to LA, and so after the war, he went back to LA, and yeah, we never heard from him again.
It wasn't until a few years ago - it was 2020 or 2021 when my dad and brother did DNA tests on like ancestry.com and from there, we found my auntie, my dad's half sister, Liz, granddad's daughter. So we connected with her in 2021 and, yeah, stayed in touch and met one another over zoom. And then in 2023 we surprised my dad and flew her out here for my nephew's christening, yeah? So they, they met for the first time. It was 80 years in the making, basically, yeah.
[02:23]
So I was born in 1996 and, I think, found out about my heritage and this connection, probably not until I was a bit older. I think when I was like a young teenager I remember us having dinner, and it coming up in conversation, and I was like, “wow, I didn't know we had family in America”. I think I thought at the time, like they could have been the Obamas. I remember because, like, I think it was around, like 2008 I was like, “oh, my God, maybe we were related to the Obamas”. Alas!
[03:01]
So I think what the heritage has given me is certainly a real passion for and interest in history. I think that in this country, rightfully so, and increasingly, we're very aware of the legacy and impacts of the Windrush generation on this country. The Anglo American heritage, I think less so but obviously because of projects like this, they're becoming more prevalent. And I think because of that… because of learning and wanting to learn more about this, yeah, you realise how much kind of history is hidden in plain sight, and I think it's a history that really encouraged and encourages me to think very internationally and in this country, to understand that actually, like our national problems have a very international dimension to them as well.
[04:15]
I think that we are taught a history that goes, you know, people were prejudiced and racist until the 60s, and then the civil rights movement happened, and it was like a linear curve towards getting better since then. But with my granddad's story, African American GIs here and in so many places across England during the Second World War, were so warmly welcomed, and like we have examples of local communities rallying behind African American GIs when white American GIs were trying to kind of taunt them. And so we actually see this example, even in the 40s, of racial solidarity, which I think is really important. And again, it… it really just busted the myth of the idea that the 60s was a starting point and things were were better from there on in, there's like actually a much longer and richer history of solidarity.
[05:24]
And it's not to sugarcoat it either and suggest that, you know, people didn't hold prejudiced backward views, but I think that right now, at a time where unfortunately, division and racism and xenophobia are becoming more rampant in this country we have this example, even in the 40s, that people could see beyond that. And so I think it's, it's an important lesson that there's no reason why we can't be doing that in 2025.
[05:57]
Yeah, I don't think I have been told, or know about, really, any like African American stories related to the Cold War. I suppose, as well, when I think of the Cold War, obviously, think of the US versus the Soviet Union, and I think of Berlin. That's what, yeah, that's what comes to mind. But not African American history, even though I know that actually, like African… like the civil rights movement was quite an important part of the Cold War in the 60s, I think I remember reading and learning about the Soviet Union sort of pointing to the US to say you're, you know, you're calling yourself the land of freedom and a democracy where you have second class citizens, obviously, with segregation. And again, that's not I think, a history people are that aware of.
[06:53]
So I do think, like, yeah, the African American experience I don't relate it to, like, the Cold War history very much. I know that Vietnam, obviously, was going alongside the civil rights movement, and I know that Martin Luther King Jr was very much against Vietnam. And so many… other civil rights activists were as well, because they were saying, you know, again, we're second class citizens, we're not going to engage in an imperial conflict where we're not treated with respect in this country. And then again, they fought during the Second World War, and I don't know if they felt a similar way of you know why we're we're second class citizens fighting for this country. I think that would be really interesting to find out more about, I guess, like how they, yeah, what their what their relationships were to, I suppose, like Vietnam and those conflicts in general, and if they felt like they should be fighting in them.
[08:00]
I'm in the process of writing a play about my family's heritage, about the Second World War, about my grandparents. The actual impetus for it was a playwriting group I was part of last year. So I was part of the High Tide Theatre's writing programme and HighTide are an East Anglian theatre company and writing company and producing house, and they obviously focus a lot on, and write, about East Anglian stories. So when I got on to the writing group, it just felt like a no brainer that I had to start writing this story.
It's a story that's been on my mind for years, and one that I wanted to get down on paper, and I'm still trying to get down on paper, to be honest, but it felt like the right thing to do it with High Tide and last… So I started working on it last year, and it then got a rehearsed reading at High Tide’s festival called High Tide Rising in November, where, yeah, a couple of actors read for Willie and Olive. Those were the name of the characters, also names of my grandparents and I wanted to write it, and want to continue to write it.
[09:25]
I think just for what I said of… It's a hidden history I feel that more people should know about, and I think it has a huge amount of relevance to today, for the necessity of finding solidarity, and also I think that, you know, I take for granted and don't realise sometimes the stakes that would have been involved for these people, like that would have been involved for these men and women who, you know, engaged in, like, an interracial relationship or had children out of wedlock.
You know, the… the potential of the huge public shame that could have been brought to the women. I think we know stories about mixed race children who were then put into, you know, orphanages and the adoption system, who went on to receive really horrific treatment from that system and from the people who adopted them. And then also, you know, there's cases, at least, I know of one case, of an African American GI who was accused of sexually assaulting a white woman when he was here.
[10:54]
So I always forget about the stakes that would have been involved for these people, and so I think a huge amount of the bravery that came with their decisions and in Tostock, as well, because there were a number of mixed race children who were born at that time. They were referred to as brown babies. Again, my village took the stance, and I remember my dad telling me that the head teacher of the local primary school said, ‘you know, these children are going to have as much of an opportunity as any other child. You know, we're not going to be actively discriminating’.
And I believe that my gran was kind of given an ultimatum by her partner at the time, who wasn't my dad's dad, who wasn't Willie, she was… he was sort of told, she was told, ‘you know, you have to give him up for adoption or we're separating’. My gran said, ‘well, I'm not doing that, so I guess we're separating’.
[12:13]
And so yeah, people, I think back then, on a local level, had to make really big moral decisions. And I think today we have to make very big moral decisions. We've got these examples in the 40s of people, you know, saying no to segregation and saying no to like, actually, just like the force of Jim Crow and, you know, the US American military and government trying to impose it on a local level. And again, I think… I get the huge stakes and courage involved in that. And again, I think that is something very necessary for the times we live in right now.
[13:00] FINISH