Pamela Roberts presents a fascinating insight into the Antiguan scholar James Arthur Harley, Kent’s Edwardian Black priest, and his wife, an African-American member of the Washington elite, and their time spent in the rural parish of Marshside, and at St. Leonards Church Deal, Kent.
The talk explores how the complex intertwining of education, religion, politics and race in the early twentieth-century impacted and shaped Harley’s life and how this translated to his church career. Harley’s life illuminates an era often overlooked with regards to Black cultural heritage in Edwardian England.