An archive-junkie with great tales: the 1919 race riots in Britain provoked the emergence of a publicly articulated critique of the double standard which allowed white men to have their way with African women in the colonies, while black men were beaten in Britain for marrying white women. Not fair; so I became an archive junkie.

At 33 years old, I still write "fan mail" and it was through one such letter to Baffour Ankomah that I first made contact with New African. Having periodically read NA since the late 90s, I became a faithful fan in 2002 while living in Accra, Ghana, where I eagerly awaited its arrival each month. This was the time when NA's reportage on Zimbabwe began to put Baffour, and the magazine as a whole, into some seriously hot water! Each month, I wondered if Baffour would "tone it down". The fact that he never did garnered my respect, even if I haven't always agreed with his viewpoints.

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After temporarily relocating to London in 2003, I promptly emailed Baffour to see if I could meet him in person, as well as the people behind NA. I was warmly received in NA's London office, and was delighted to be able to pick Baffour's brain for several hours at a nearby pub! What more could a fan ask for?

My first piece of writing for NA appeared in January 2005. It was a lengthy response to Stella Orakwue's History's Most Sordid Cover-Up, which appeared in her Not in Black and White column. Therein, I argued the historical origins of mixed race populations in Europe's former colonies in North and South America, the Caribbean and Africa are not located solely in this silenced history of the rape of black women by white men, as Stella had suggested. I was heartened that the piece was published and that it was taken up with interest by NA readers.

Meanwhile, I had been working in archives located in Ghana and the UK for several years and was constantly blown away by the stories I was coming across. With seed funding from One Race Films, a Los Angeles-based production company, I was able to digitise all of the records I was working with. What I needed next was a space where I could share with others all the amazing stories embedded in my digital archive. I approached Baffour with the idea of a Tales from the Archives column ... and the rest is "Black History"! In October 2005, my first Tales column appeared under the not-so-subtle sub-title, "Britain: The Sex Problem". Based on a series of Home Office files located at the National Archives in Kew (London), the debut column focused on the race riots which swept the British ports in the summer of 1919.

At the heart of the riots was the accusation that black men, primarily from Britain's colonies, were not only taking work away from recently demobilised white British men, but also taking "their" women. The violence perpetrated against black men during the riots was so vicious that it included Britain's first documented lynching; that of Charles Wooten, a 24-year-old West Indian who had served as a fireman in the British navy during the First World War.

What I also tried to underscore was that when news of the riots reached West Africa, it provoked the emergence of a publicly articulated critique of the double standard which allowed white men to have their way with African women in the colonies, while black men were beaten in Britain for marrying or cohabiting with white women.

In calling for an end to this hypocrisy, West Africans were not only demanding equality, they were also refusing to accept anything short of it. In this way, the tangled histories of colonial and metropolitan interracial sexual relations were an integral, if little known, catalyst of early 20th century anti-colonial sentiments amongst West Africans.

Subsequent columns have covered a range of different issues and I am happy to report that Tales is slated to cover even more ground in future issues. Thanks to joint funding from One Race Films and the Department of History at Penn State University, I will be able to travel to one, if not two different African archives each year to digitise records.

In'shallah, South Africa and Sudan will be the next two countries I visit as part of this exciting project which, in collaboration with African archivists, seeks to use digital technology as a means of preserving archival holdings from all over Africa and making them globally accessible through the internet.

By now you've probably figured out that I am an archive-junkie, so it should come as no surprise that I am a historian. I recently completed my Ph.D. in African History at Cornell University and am presently a post-doctoral fellow at Penn State University where I am working on my book manuscript, Policing Sexual Boundaries: The Politics of Race in Colonial Ghana.

When I don't have my nose in the books, you might find me behind a Scrabble board. Lest you think I am a total bore, I'll close by saying that good music (especially reggae and anything by Oumou Sangare), great clothes, and beautiful beaches are my other passions.