“neo“le believe that because g am a man of colour, g am a lucky omen”
NAME: Ita Ekpenyon AGE IN 1940: 41 JOB: Student and air raid warden
Ita was born in Nigeria, where he worked as a teacher before coming to London in 1928 to study law. When war broke out he was living at 146 Great Titchfield Street; he became an air raid warden, with Marylebone his local patch. Ita’s job was to make sure that people obeyed the blackout rules, to keep order in the shelters, and to help people to safety during raids.
One of a small community of only 15,000 Londoners of African origin, Ita is among the most well-known of the black people who experienced the Blitz, largely because he wrote a memoir of his service.
Some of the people on his patch considered it “lucky” to have a black warden. ”It amuses me,” he wrote, “that in the district where I work the people believe that because I am a man of colour, I am a lucky omen. I had heard of such child-like beliefs, but I am delighted that such beliefs exist.”
But he also experienced the casual racism that was common in 1940s London. Once he had to intervene to prevent some foreigners from being ejected from a shelter, recalling that: “Some of the shelterers told the others to go back to their own countries.” Ita told them that he “would like to see a spirit of friendliness, cooperation and comradeship prevail at this very trying time in the history of the empire”.
Calm and friendly, Ita noted that his very presence “seemed to cheer the people, for they felt the wardens were looking after them”. After the war he became a postman. He died in 1951.