A Liverpool Exemplar - June Henfrey

June Henfrey was born June Gollop, in Barbados on the 1st of June 1939. She grew up among an extended family in St. Davids Village, in the parish of Christ Church, deep in the heart of sugarcane country. At 18 she became the first woman to win what was then the island's one annual scholarship for study at a university. This took her to Oxford University where she read French, gained a first class degree and taught there while carrying out research for a PhD on the Afro-Caribbean poet and politician Aime Cesaire.

Whilst in Oxford she met and married Colin Henfrey, an anthropologist and photographer, with whom she travelled and worked with in the United States and Brazil, before settling in the UK in Liverpool where she raised three sons. In the early 1980s June established the UK's first Caribbean Studies course in Bradford, commuting across the Pennines from Liverpool twice a week. She also worked in a number of community projects in Liverpool, with which she continued to be closely involved once she returned to academic life as a lecturer in Social and Ethnic Studies at the University of Liverpool. Whilst at the University of Liverpool June was instrumental in getting a Diploma and MA in Black Studies as part of the University's curriculum, which at the time was seen as trailblazing.

She was particularly involved in the Liverpool Women's Technology Scheme which went on to become a major provider of Womens education and services in the UK. As a result it moved into Blackburne House, the Grade 2 listed Building in Hope Street, which in 1844 was the first girls school in the country. In addition to being a board member on the Women's Technology Scheme, June was also a director of Liverpool's Young Persons Advisory Service. The Women's Technology Scheme was a highly innovative programme to support women into non traditional areas such as micro-electronics and being a key board member, June was passionate about equality and inclusion. 
Unfortunately June became ill and so was not part of the ongoing journey but her active participation in the early days laid the foundations. At the opening of the stunning Grade II-listed building Blackburne House, the board and staff wanted to acknowledge June and so named the library after her. Formerly The Liverpool Institute High School for Girls, which provided education to women and girls as far back as the mid-1800s, it now houses a permanent exhibition of women and girls, pictures that meant much to June as they were taken by Colin Henfrey her husband on their travels in South America.

In 1991 she learnt that she had cancer and began writing the stories which were posthumously published as 'Coming Home and Other Stories' by Peepal Tree in 1994. The stories are set in Barbados, to which she returned frequently in her later life, and are concerned with the lives of women and their struggle to change their lives and their island's history from slavery onwards. They recover the roles and experiences of Bajan women on the island's history from slavery to the modern day. She completed six of the stories in 'Coming Home' during the two years before she died in 1992. Chris Searle of the Morning Star wrote, "June Henfrey's stories have left us the words and spirit of a writer and woman whose life and creative impulse was ever to seek freedom and betterment for her people."

Her contribution to Liverpool life is also recognised in John King's 1998 art installation 'A Case History' in the heart of Liverpool's famous Georgian Quarter. The Hope Street 'Suitcases' at the junction with Mount Street, near LIPA (the old 'Liverpool Institute') and Liverpool School of Art, are opposite the Blackburne House Centre for Women. The labelled suitcases 'belong' to many of Hope Street Quarter's most illustrious names and organisations with case Number13 being dedicated to -' June Henfrey, the Liverpool University lecturer in Ethnic Studies in the Department of Sociology who came from Barbados and helped to establish Blackburne House Centre for Women'.

see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2021/04/a-liverpool-exemplar-samuel-smith.html