I am black and British. This is not a lifestyle choice. My parents were part of the great migration from the global South when the empire, demographically speaking, struck back. It’s the historical hand I was dealt. And it’s not a bad hand. These are not the most interesting things about me. But at certain moments in the eight years I’ve lived in the United States, they have been the most confusing to others.

On 1 February 1960 Franklin McCain and three teenage friends from the historically black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, went to the whites-only counter at Woolworths in Greensboro and took a seat.