Uncovering the Streets of Bank:

I’ve walked these streets countless times, through the heart of Bank, surrounded by crowds of suits and hurried footsteps. The cafes, gleaming shopfronts, and towering buildings were once just part of the city’s rhythm, a blur of movement I never questioned. But now, they carry a weight, filled with a history I had never noticed before. What once felt ordinary has shifted, and I can never walk here the same way again.

Tony Warner’s Black History Walk didn’t just tell a story; it revealed one already etched into these streets. Those towering buildings I once saw as symbols of power, now feel like monuments to a history of plunder. Take the Goldsmiths’ Guild, its lion’s head emblem displayed proudly. Once, it seemed like a mark of craftsmanship. Now, I see the lion as a relic of empire, its power stolen from lands like Ghana and Angola. Gold, ripped from the earth by unseen hands, transformed into tokens of British wealth. Lions, after all, don’t roam London; they belong to lands stripped of their resources, their image appropriated to roar in the name of the empire.

This pattern of exploitation is everywhere. The Tobacco and Pipe Blenders’ Guild features a white hand holding a pipe, calm and assured, while beneath it lie the untold stories of Black labourers toiling in the fields, their lives erased to uphold symbols of prestige and power. Even the word guild, once meaningless to me, now carries the weight of a system built on exploitation, one that enriched a few by silencing the many.

Names I once passed without thought now feel loaded with shadows. Elephant and Castle, for instance, used to strike me as just another quirky London name. But as Tony explained, it’s anything but random. The elephants, once symbols of power and majesty, were reduced to commodities, tools of imperial greed. Their tusks became delicate trinkets for European homes, their hides crafted into saddles. Thousands of miles from their homelands, their suffering has been erased, leaving only the hollow echo of their name.

And then there’s gold. Always the gold. It glitters in storefronts, wrapped in promises of love and success, but its shine hides a darker truth. In 2019, 98.3% of Ghana’s gold was controlled by multinational corporations, with only 1.7% of its value returning to Ghana itself (Common dreams, Celina Della Croce, 2019). The numbers are staggering, but the human cost is even greater. I can’t stop thinking about the hands that pulled it from the ground, the lives bent and broken beneath its weight. Gold flows freely across borders, transformed into symbols of love and wealth, while the people who labour for it remain invisible.

It’s not just wealth that’s stolen; it’s history. We don’t learn about the ones who resisted, the ones who fought back. Stories of Black resistance are whispers, buried beneath the tales of this empire’s glory. Tony told us about Flight Lieutenant John Henry Smythe, a Black RAF pilot in World War II whose courage has been forgotten, and the 2.5 million Indian soldiers who fought alongside him, their sacrifices erased from memory. History is selective, and what it chooses to forget speaks as loudly as what it remembers.

Even the names given to Africa’s coasts such as: Ivory Coast, Gold Coast, Grain Coast are reductions, defining entire regions by what could be taken from them. The empire wasn’t content with resources alone; it wanted culture, features, even bodies. Dave’s lyrics echo in my mind:

"Black is strugglin’ to find your history or trace the shit.

You don’t know the truth about your race ’cause they erasin’ it." (Dave, 2019, 1:47)

It’s not just a matter of forgetting, it’s an active erasure.

Take Chika Unigwe’s story(see, AEON, unigwe, 2013): a Nigerian woman steps into a shop in Brussels and is offered a cleaning job on the spot. No questions, no context, just an assumption. It’s a small moment, but it reflects a larger narrative, the same one that lets Belgium keep a statue of King Leopold II standing despite his reign of terror in Congo. Millions brutalised, violated, and dehumanised, yet the bronze remains, as if the blood spilled has been scrubbed clean.

The word évolué (see, Arica is a country, Unigwe, 2019) was used by colonial powers, particularly in places like Belgium, to describe the “civilised” African, someone who dressed in Western clothes, spoke the coloniser’s language, and adhered to their norms. This term was a tool for enforcing assimilation, stripping away African identity in favour of a more acceptable, European version. It’s the same narrative that continues today: be Black, but not too Black. It is a demand for conformity and the erasure of cultural authenticity

The evidence is everywhere, hidden in plain sight. The obelisks in London, Paris, and the Vatican, pillars stolen from Egypt and dragged across continents, now stand as trophies of conquest. These monuments don’t belong here. They never did. Their presence is cultural appropriation on a massive scale, a reminder of how these empires takes what they want and claims it as their own.

It’s the same story when Kim Kardashian wears braids, often referred to as “box braids,” and they are labelled as a trendy new style due to her influence. However, these braids have been a part of African culture for centuries, carrying deep meaning and history. Their origins are often ignored or forgotten as they are repackaged as a fashionable trend. From hairstyles to monuments, the pattern is clear: take what’s valuable, rebrand it, and erase the people and cultures it originally belonged to.

Even resistance, when it exists, is relegated to footnotes. Tony told us about women-led slave revolts and figures like Sanité Bélair and Nanny of the Maroons. These women are leaders, revolutionaries, heroes. But where are their statues? Their stories remain hidden, their impact overlooked in favour of this empire’s narrative.

As I walked back, the city felt different. The polished shopfronts and towering buildings no longer seemed neutral. They carried the weight of what had been hidden beneath them for so long. But in that heaviness, I felt something else: hope.

Johny Pitts (see Pitts, 2020 [2019]): 160–162) writes about the second, third, and fourth generations of multicultural Europe the sons and daughters of post-colonialism, carving out space for themselves in a world that still tries to erase them. That’s the Europe I want to believe in: one that doesn’t cling to its colonial past but reckons with it, learns from it, and grows.

Tony Warner’s Black History Walk wasn’t just a tour. It was a reckoning. A reminder that history isn’t something we leave behind it’s something we live with, etched into the buildings, streets, and monuments around us.

The city I thought I knew is gone. In its place is one that demands to be questioned, to be understood. And I’ll keep walking, through its streets, through its stories, through this history that refuses to stay buried. There’s still so much to learn.