Anna Rothery is the first black woman to hold the position of Lord Mayor of Liverpool, a largely ceremonial role for elected councillors to promote the interests of the city.
But she finds hard one aspect of Liverpool’s past that made the city what it is today — its links to the international slave trade.
“It’s an awful, wicked history for the city,” the city council member told AFP, pointing to a street sign named after one of Liverpool’s leading slave-trading dynasties.
“Earle Street depicts a family that expanded over a century in terms of dealing with ships, slavery, working with plantations, transporting goods from Virginia,” she said.
At the junction of Cunliffe Street and Sir Thomas Street, she points out that both were named after owners of the first registered slave ships to leave the city in northwest England.
“Everybody from around the world comes to the city to visit because they want to understand the role that Liverpool played in the transatlantic…
Source: Guardian Newspaper
