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Oral history recording with Raphael Martin, born in Cardiff in 1964. Recorded as part of Race Council Cymru’s Windrush Cymru Heritage Project.

“You’re in a class of 30 and you’re the only Black person. So I felt so uncomfortable… I got caned every single day… until I was 14.”

Raphael Martin was born in Cardiff’s St David’s Hospital in 1964. He remembers much of his parents’ life, and moved from Jamaica to Cardiff.

“My father come over here in 1951, to Birmingham. He came from Jamaica, was born [in] September 1917, he would be 102 if he was alive today…”

“In them days, there wasn’t sort of a welcome from churches, churches were mostly white… So it was easy then for Black people to start churches… My dad had the first Black Pentecostal church in Wales.”

“After the Aberfan [disaster] – the landslide in 1966 – your dad come up and he’s praying and everything here…”

“Dad brought people up to wherever he was in Merthyr, and he said all the children come out to the van saying ‘Who are they?’ cos they’d never really seen Black people before.”

“I was a child just like everyone else but I was Black and I used to get beaten just because I was Black…”

“I learnt that Black people have big noses and big lips and they’re ugly and look like monkeys… I know I learnt it from school, so I was prejudiced, or racist, towards my own people…. When we’re young, we don’t really understand racism, how deep it is or bad it is…”

“I got pulled over [in] my car plenty of times, I’d drive, stop, get harassed…”

“We need to treat everyone with respect and love. That’s how we should be.”

“I wish now… my dad had… talked to me about what it was like… this is for my children, to keep them interested, at least there is something there now, thank God for that.”