IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Marshall Street, SMETHWICK, B67 7NB

Since 2012 the house on the corner of Park Road and Marshall Street, Smethwick, has carried a blue plaque, which reads: Nubian Jak Community Trust Malcolm X 1925-1965 International civil rights campaigner. Advocated desegregated housing in Smethwick with his visit to Marshall Street in 1965. Recognize Sandwell MBC African Caribbean Self Help Organisation Indian Workers Association (GB) Sandwell MBC (Metropolitan Borough Council) is the successor to the County Borough of Smethwick, which at the time of Malcolm X's visit, was proposing to compulsorily purchase every house on Marshall Street to let to white people only. The previous year, the Conservative candidate Peter Griffiths had won the parliamentary seat on an openly racist election slogan and a policy platform of racial segregation. Malcolm X, who was on a tour of Europe and speaking at Birmingham University, was invited by the Indian Workers' Association to visit Smethwick, where he spoke to local people and experienced local conditions, including being excluded from a pub which operated a whites-only 'colour bar' policy: see Image Malcolm X was assassinated nine days after the visit, shortly after his return to the USA. The council subsequently abandoned its segregationist policy; Marshall Street is now an integrated, multicultural street. See the blog of Verso Books https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/5046-malcolm-x-and-the-midlands for an account of the visit, also the site of the Nubian Jak Trust https://nubianjak.com/malcolm-x-plaque-february-2012/ .

A pub between Oldbury and Smethwick.

This memorial to a Victorian entrepreneur, a director of and partner in the local company Chance Brothers & Co in Smethwick and Oldbury, was erected around 1900, and Grade II listed https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101077101-memorial-to-james-chance-in-west-smethwick-park-st-pauls-ward#.XRUqDuhKjcs & https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1077101 in 1987. He gifted West Smethwick Park to the people of the area, having purchased the land, laid the park out (probably not personally) and opened it in autumn 1895.

Opened in 1867 as Smethwick Junction by the Great Western Railway on its line from Birmingham Snow Hill to Stourbridge, this station closed in 1995. It was effectively replaced by Smethwick Galton Bridge, just 100m to the east and which straddles two railway lines. View east towards Galton Bridge and Birmingham. Both platforms were extant when this image was taken but everything else had been removed.