My friend Gerlin Bean, who has died aged 85, was a leading light of the British Black feminist movement. A founding member of OWAAD (Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent), she was an effective and persuasive organiser, fiercely committed to empowering her community.
Also a founder member in 1973 of the Brixton Black Women’s Group, Gerlin remained a key figure in the south London area for the next decade. She helped set up Sabaar Books, one of the first Black bookshops in Brixton, in the late 1970s, and, as a guidance counsellor at Brixton College, was instrumental in securing creche facilities there that allowed countless women to gain access to further education. Prior to that, she had helped establish the WIPAG (West Indian Parents’ Action Group), which provided nursery facilities and early years’ education for working mothers in Lambeth.
Hers was one of two lone Black faces at the first Women’s Liberation Conference in Oxford in 1970. Gerlin was a committed Marxist whose activism encompassed Black, gay and women’s liberation. As such, her politics were genuinely intersectional.
Born in Hanover, Jamaica, she was the third of the seven children of Ralph Bean, a farmer, and his wife, Melgata (nee Spence). After completing her secondary education at Manning’s school in Westmoreland, Gerlin travelled to the UK aged 18 to train as a nurse at Bethnal Green general hospital, and transferred to Warlingham Park psychiatric hospital in Surrey in 1961.
However, her experience of racism on the wards combined with single parenthood following the birth of her daughter, Jennifer, led to a growing political consciousness, and in the late 60s she left nursing and began youth work in the Seventies Coffee Bar on the Harrow Road. Her commitment to ensuring young Black people had a future earned her instant respect.
After gaining a degree in social science and administration at the London School of Economics (1978), Gerlin began working at Brixton College. In 1983, she left Britain to work for the CIIR (Catholic Institute of International Relations) in the newly independent Zimbabwe, where she helped organise volunteer doctors and teachers. After returning to Jamaica in 1987, she played an increasingly influential role as director of 3D Projects, an organisation in Spanish Town dedicated to supporting and empowering young people with disabilities.
In 1997 she became the chair of Children First Agency in Jamaica, and remained a board member until 2019. She returned to the UK in 2020 to live with Jennifer.
I am one of many women who would describe Gerlin as both a mentor and a role model in those early days of the Black British civil rights movement. Our mutual involvement with the Black Liberator journal in the mid-70s, and with OWAAD, from its founding in 1978, led to a close and enduring friendship. A book, Gerlin Bean: Mother of a Movement, by AS Francis, was published in 2023.
Jennifer survives her, as do two grandchildren, Junior and Sharleen.
• This article was amended on 2 June 2025. OWAAD was founded in 1978, not 1975 as stated in an earlier version.
