Black British civil rights campaigner Roy Hackett dies at 93

By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — A Black civil rights campaigner who helped lead a bus boycott that played a key role in ending legal racial discrimination in Britain has died. Roy Hackett was 93. In 1963, Hackett helped organize a boycott of the government-owned Bristol Omnibus Company over its refusal to hire Black or Asian drivers and conductors. Britain had no law at the time barring racial discrimination in employment or housing. The boycott forced the company to change its policy, and created momentum for the 1965 passage of Britain’s first legal ban on racial discrimination. Born in Jamaica, Hackett was among the thousands of people from Britain’s former colonies who arrived to rebuild the U.K. after World War II.