Photographer Neil Kenlock (born 1950) moved to South London from Jamaica in 1963 and became determined to document black pride in the face of racial prejudice. He became the official photographer for the civil rights activists the British Black Panthers, and took photographs for the early black British newspaper, West Indian World.

Kenlock’s photojournalism for West Indian World included recording instances of racism against the black British community. The ‘keep Britain white’ graffiti in this photograph defaced the door to a training centre for black women headed by a key member of the British Black Panther movement, David Udah. To prove that the graffiti was real Kenlock asked Barbara Grey, a woman working at the centre, to be part of the photograph.

The V&A acquired ten photographs by Kenlock alongside work by his contemporaries Charlie Phillips and Armet Francis as part of the Staying Power project. Staying Power is a five year partnership between the V&A and Black Cultural Archives. The project aims to explore black British experience from the 1950s to the 1990s through photographs acquired by the V&A and oral histories conducted by Black Cultural Archives.