By Deborah Hardiman

Copyright expressandstar

The 24-year-old died from asphyxia when the officers tried to arrest him in full view of passing shoppers inside the glass-fronted former Next store in Dudley Street on February 20, 1987 – after unproven allegations that a credit card had been stolen.

This then resulted in demonstrations and serious disorder resembling scenes after the George Floyd tragedy in the United States in 2020.

Now a new campaign is to be set up to acquire a new plaque ahead of the 40th anniversary of his death in response to his family and previously calls for public recognition, healing and justice. It will be launched at a special event on Tuesday(Sept 16) at Wolverhampton Science Park, Technology Centre, in Glaisher Drive, Wolverhampton at 6pm.

His mother Esther McCurbin said: “For nearly four decades my son’s death has been overlooked, unacknowledged and buried. We have carried the pain in silence. But this campaign is our way of saying his life mattered. His death mattered. Justice delayed is not justice denied — not if we stand up now.”

The Clinton McCurbin Memorial Campaign group said the event will mark a significant step towards commemorating what happened. It said the memorial will ensure that his life and the community struggle that followed his death are remembered as a vital part of Black British history and Wolverhampton’s civic legacy.

The project aims to establish a permanent public memorial, organise an annual remembrance event on or near February 20, run education programmes and arts in schools and communities, as well as support national deaths in custody campaigns, and action against systemic racism.

A new digital archive and storytelling platform is also being developed to collect oral histories, documents and creative responses to Mr McCurbin’s story and the wider impact of deaths in custody.

Guests at the “STOP! We Are Not the Police” gathering will include West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner Simon Foster and victims’ advocate Natalie Queiroz, of Sutton Coldfield, who was stabbed 24 times when she was eight months pregnant in March 2016.

Mr McCurbin’s death in 1987 sparked public outrage and the setting up of the original McCurbin Defence Campaign which included leading activists, lawyers, and community figures. Yet despite the protests and inquiries that followed, there was no official apology, no public memorial and no meaningful acknowledgement of his loss.

Memorial committee chairman Professor Patrick Vernon, who was part of the original campaign in the late 1980s, said: “Clinton McCurbin’s death was a defining moment in the struggle for racial justice in Britain. It is time for truth. It is time for healing. That’s why we are calling for a blue plaque in Clinton’s name — not only to mark the place of his death, but to mark a beginning. A beginning of remembering. A beginning of reckoning.”

Committee member Ruth South added: “We can’t talk about justice without talking about healing. This campaign is about more than a memorial. It’s about bringing people together — especially those still grieving, still frustrated, still angry, still afraid — and saying: you are not alone. We carry this history together, and we heal together.”

Last year a memorial service was held at the Church Of God Of Prophecy, in Gloucester Street, Whitmore Reans to mark the 37th anniversary.