Ishmael Wright moved from Jamaica to Manchester in 1961 and has lived in the city ever since.
“I started work on the railway at Victoria station and I stayed there all my working life,” he explained. “Since I retired my friends and I formed a little group and we go to schools and we pass on our life stories to children.”
“My ancestors were slaves so their work helped to develop the tea, chocolate and cotton trade which in turn became part of the British culture.”
Visitors can see examples from the Manchester textile merchant Paterson Zochonis that became a household name in Africa, photographs of electricity cables being laid in Calcutta, India, in the 1930s and documents relating to the development of the railways in Africa.
