In 1999, Gaverne watched a television programme about the start of the first millennium and how different cultures had contributed to civilisation over the next 2000 years. “I noticed the programme said little or nothing about how Africa or people of African descent had contributed to the human story. The programme had chosen to start with the world at the time of Jesus and had even shown one of the wise men as being black.” Gaverne said in a Guardian opinion piece in 2008, “So I asked: how is it that at the first millennium Africans seemed to be in the right place at the right time, and yet in the next two millennia, we were led to believe, did very little.”
It inspired him to creating a visual representation of Black History. “My original intention was not to retell the story of the last two millennia,” he says, “but simply to insert an element that had been left out.”
The series was hugely popular, and was published in the Guardian in 2008 during Black History Month.
In 2020, during the Black Lives Matter movement, the series was updated and published once again by the Guardian. You can read the full series online as well as reading an interview with Gaverne and Joseph Harker, the Guardian’s deputy opinion editor.
Gaverne has a passion for teaching that he developed during a five year stay in Paris, and he says that influenced his desire to educate and inform. Aside from the Guardian timeline, he has also worked with the British Library and British Museum to create other important timelines as well.
Gaverne says that his path was heavily influenced by one his professors at Liverpool, Professor Benny Pollack who sadly passed in 2020. Gaverne says that winning the 2023 Alumni Award is his way of saying “Thank you” to Professor Pollack.
Gaverne is now studying for his PhD at the University of Leicester and works as a Heritage Officer for Hammersmith & Fulham Council.