King Charles III’s coronation will be a site for politics

Consider the case of Geneva Valentine, an African American woman who showed up to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on June 2, 1953. Valentine was not the typical coronation tourist. In contrast to the dignitaries, aristocrats and celebrities who received the lion’s share of media attention, Valentine was a real estate agent and a political organizer from Washington, D.C., who wanted to make Black voices a part of the new Elizabethan era launched by the crowning of the new queen.

Valentine’s political activism had begun two decades earlier after she worked in the law office of L. Melendez King — a prominent Black attorney in Washington. Valentine helped create the Equitable Realty Company in 1931 with the explicit goal of curbing discrimination in the D.C. real estate market. She took particular issue with the racial covenants that prevented Black people from buying homes in certain buildings and neighborhoods. Together with other activists and attorneys, Valentine helped bring a covenant case to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948, where the group succeeded in convincing the majority of the justices that such covenants were “unenforceable.”

At the same time as Valentine was engaging in housing advocacy, she was also directing her energies toward organizing women. Painfully aware that sexism as much as racism had contributed to her own professional challenges — Valentine was one of a very few women working in the real estate industry in D.C. — she took it upon herself to facilitate employment and networking opportunities for other Black women. She helped establish Inspiration House, a Black cultural center in the Kalorama neighborhood. And she joined the Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs. By the time of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, she had become that organization’s president.

Informed by these experiences, Valentine decided that the coronation was a prime occasion for modeling Black uplift, forging an international sisterhood and raising awareness about global racial discrimination, including the dire conditions of Blacks living under apartheid in South Africa.

Valentine’s itinerary, then, did not just involve watching the queen’s passing carriage, albeit from a window inside the John Lewis department store. During her stay in the U.K., Valentine recorded an interview with the BBC, attended a reception at the U.S. Embassy and canvassed African Americans living abroad about their experiences of racism. She also consulted with Dame Caroline Haslett, president of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women, “about housing, segregation of colonials, about their attitude toward Colored Americans, about job opportunities and many other things in which I was interested.”

Through these conversations, Valentine created her own network, establishing international connections. In the weeks and months that followed, she continued to engage with those whom she had met during her travels, and she shared their perspectives with those at home. She organized slide shows and published a piece by Haslett in Responsibility, the official magazine of the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women.

In this way she called attention to hard truths. Corresponding with a Black woman working at an air force base in the U.K., Valentine asked about the “colour bar,” as the informal practice of racial discrimination was described in Britain. The response she received highlighted a harsh reality about racism abroad (despite British protestations to the contrary). As the woman reported: “There have never been any lynchings in England, so stated a young man with whom I was discussing the problem. I replied to him that there were more ways to die than by lynching. I would rather be lynched than stoned to death.”

Even as she worked to shed light on such injustices, Valentine also saw the value of injecting more joy into the Black experience. That, too, was a legacy of her trip. Valentine used her travels to learn more about the global Black struggle. At the same time, she used her visit to promote freedom of movement and, like the Black journalist Gerri Major who covered the coronation for Jet, encouraged others to think about how they also might find happiness by traversing borders and boundaries.

Valentine’s presence at the coronation, with all of its associations with royalty and splendor, was in and of itself a political statement. It suggested a more expansive future for other African American women. That is why the mere fact of Valentine’s attendance became legendary in her community. A pamphlet published years after Valentine’s return noted that one of Valentine’s signal achievements had been her trip to England. Even at her death, in 1971, Valentine would be remembered in the African American press as a witness to the queen’s coronation.

Valentine is a reminder of the richness of African American political activism in the 1950s, and its “world-minded” investments, to borrow a phrase from Valentine. As historian Keisha Blain has written, far from being narrowly focused, the nascent civil rights movement was a multifaceted endeavor, one already deeply attuned to intersectional dynamics.

That’s why the crowds outside the upcoming coronation of King Charles III matter. Sure, they gather to see the guests and their gowns. But some may also be there to push British society to be more inclusive and democratic. Their actions, perhaps far more than those of the new king, will help determine the meaning of his reign.