Sybil Phoenix, a Civil Life

Available for over a year

The years after Sybil Phoenix's arrival in England from British Guiana in 1956 follow a not unfamiliar pattern - trying to find a home and secure a livelihood, learning how to manage the endemic racism in Britain and, above all things, building a community. Fostering countless children, setting up the famous Moonshot youth club in south-east London and dealing with the reaction from right-wing extremists bound together her personal and public lives. In 1972 she accepted - not without controversy - an MBE, the first black woman to do so. With her new status she set up a hostel for young women, the Marsha Phoenix Memorial Trust. Now aged 97, Sybil's story is shared by her son Woodrow and daughter Loraine, the activist Eric Huntley, who's known her for over 80 years, and through previously not heard recordings that touch on her troubled early life, the death of her daughter Marsha, the New Cross Fire and much else. Produced by Cherise Hamilton-Stephenson and Alan Hall A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4