In the summer of 1985 some women of Afro-German heritage had got together in Berlin and written a book which would provide the foundation for the development of an Afro-German identity. They called it Farbe bekennen (English edition Showing Our Colors). The German sub-title was “Afro-German women in search of their history”. It must have been the first time that people who had previously been labelled and insulted with the terms “Neger”, “mulatto” or “Mischling” spoke out in Germany, in their own language – German – and made themselves known to the world. Among those who contributed to the book were Erika and Dorothea, the daughters of Mandenga Diek, a countryman of my father. I knew them both from working on films and in the Völkerschauen as a child. They were both older than I, married with children and grandchildren. Both are now dead. Another daughter of a countryman, Gottfried Kinger, who was known among the countrymen as “Johnny de sympathie” because of his refined manners and good looks, also contributed to the book.22 She was born in the Nazi period – 1945 – and hidden by her parents. She had a completely different experience from the other Afro- Germans of my generation. One of the co-editors of the book, with Dagmar Schultz, was the historian Katharina Oguntoye, daughter of a Nigerian who had immigrated after the war. In 1997 she published her Master's thesis as Eine Afro-deutsche Geschichte. Zur Lebenssituation von Afrikanern und Afro-Deutschen in Deutschland von 1884 bis 1850 (An Afro-German History. On the Situation of Africans and Afro-Germans in Germany from 1884 to 1950). A third co-editor was May Ayim, who died young; she was born in 1960, the daughter of an immigrant Ghanaian. She was known for poems in which she reflected on the situation of Afro-Germans. In 2009 a street in Berlin was even named after her.

That book inspired me. I was impressed by the courage and enthusiasm with which those women approached their project and which we older Afro-Germans been unable to mobilize in response to our experiences in the Weimar Republic, the Nazi period and the years that followed. Not long after the book appeared two organizations of Afro-Germans were formed: ADEFRA (Schwarze Frauen in Deutschland – Black Women in Germany) and ISD (Initiative Schwarze Deutsche – Initiative of Black Germans).