The Black Power salute was highly topical and controversial in 1968. Two African-American medal-winning athletes, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, had given it at the Olympic Games in Mexico to widespread publicity. Nonetheless, such an action was hardly anticipated a month later at Eton College by an actor taking a bow to an unsuspecting audience after a performance of Antony and Cleopatra.
The salute was given by Dillibe Onyeama, only the second black boy to attend arguably the most famous school in the world. He had a bit-part as a Roman messenger and raised a black-gloved right fist after being dared to do so by a boy backstage. The audience in the school theatre took this, on the whole, in good heart and when the details appeared in the national press, the headmaster, Anthony Chenevix-Trench, was quoted as saying it was “a light-hearted bit of fun”.
Chenevix-Trench could well have taken a more censorious attitude, as he had a reputation for frequent use of the cane and disliked press publicity. “But he was not biased against minorities,” his biographer, Mark Peel, said. “His years in a prisoner of war camp might have enhanced his belief in all races.”
A week later the headmaster had to contend with more national newspaper reports involving Onyeama, this time focusing on him practising witchcraft.
“I took a fancy to practising hypnotism,” Onyeama wrote. “I attempted to hypnotise boys on 13 occasions and succeeded on seven of them. Because Africans had a history of studying the spiritual part of the world and the forces of good and evil, the boys interpreted it as evil.” A false rumour went around that he wanted to cast a spell over one particular boy so as to have a homosexual relationship with him. Onyeama persisted with his hypnotism, even though the school tried to put a stop to any such extra-curricular activities.
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He wrote about these episodes in 1972, four years after he had left the school. His book, N***** At Eton, caused a huge stir and resulted in him being banned from returning by Chenevix-Trench’s successor, Michael McCrum, after attempts to have it pulped were rejected by the publisher, Frewin. It detailed claims, with some names changed, of the racial abuse he had received during his four years. Onyeama perceived himself to be “black and aggressive, unpopular and racially tormented, academically dim and patronised. But as a sportsman, respected. That was to be the same throughout my time at Eton.”
When he went into the dining room on his first day, he wrote, “a sea of moving white jaws became gapingly still as I entered. Almost complete silence momentarily fell and every head turned to look at me. My eyes must have rolled, my nostrils must have flared and I know I gave a small whine of alarm.”
The first black boy to attend Eton, Tokunbo Akintola, was also from Nigeria and had arrived two years before him, but they did not hit it off. Ironically, the two individuals Onyeama liked best were white boys from apartheid South Africa, whereas there were English Etonians, he claimed, who made ape sounds in his presence, attributed his indifferent academic results to the colour of his skin and asked him if it felt strange to wear a tailcoat instead of walking around naked.
His accusations in 1972 were met with omerta, which meant that the accuracy of all his allegations was hard to gauge. Hugo Vickers, the historian and royal biographer who was a contemporary, said: “Apart from the idiotic way boys of that age tease each other, I never thought he was badly treated, but the book says otherwise. He was a nice, kind boy and an equally nice, kind man.” John Barclay, who pursued a career in cricket, recalled that he was “a fast bowler and a very good boxer” but had no recollection of hostile attitudes towards him.
There was no byline on a critical book review in the Eton Chronicle: “A severe problem during Mr Onyeama’s career at Eton seems to have been his slow progress at academic work. Having arrived at the age of 14, all the way up the school he took little interest and was continually the oldest boy in his divisions. The author sees in anybody’s references to his work a racial insinuation that Africans are not as bright as the English.
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“This denigration of his country certainly worried Mr Onyeama at school, and it seems that it did occur among the boys to a certain extent, but it was not said in an abusive manner. He quotes the example of many of his friends congratulating his success in O-levels and interprets this as racialist, and considers any allowances made by masters or boys because of the adaptability required for moving from one country to live in another to be again racialist.
“Here the question of colour is virtually irrelevant; these allowances would have been made for anybody being educated in a foreign country, for that person is bound to be confronted initially with some difficulties, and people are likely to help them along. Mr Onyeama not only appears ungrateful for such help but also dislikes the interest shown in him by several masters because he sees ‘racial discrimination’.” Yet Michael Kidson, David Cameron’s enigmatic favourite teacher who was renowned for his acerbic utterances, was reported to have said of Onyeama: “My God, if there were trees in my division room, he’d have been swinging in ’em.”
Charles Dillibe Ejiofor Onyeama was born in Enugu, the second son of Charles Onyeama, a justice of the supreme court of Nigeria and a judge at the International Court of Justice, and Susannah Uzoamaka Ogwudu. His grandfather, Paramount Chief Onyeama, was believed to have had 56 wives and was the first person from the Igbo tribe to go to England as a free man and not as a slave. Charles Onyeama was impressed by what he had learnt of English public schools and put his son down for Eton at birth. Initially the young Dillibe was sent to Grove Park preparatory school in Sussex.
Although Onyeama liked his housemaster at Eton, he regarded Etonians as “vicious little Caesars” and resorted to using his fists to deal with bullies and baiting. His book was reprinted last year under the title A Black Boy at Eton, after his ban from visiting Eton had been lifted. In 2020 Simon Henderson, the present headmaster, issued an apology to Onyeama for the abuse he had received. Onyeama said he would return to it from Nigeria only if his airfare was paid.
After leaving Eton, Onyeama gained a diploma in journalism and became managing editor of Satellite Books in London. He published John Bull’s N*****, only to be reported over its contents to the police by a black member of the Race Relations Board. He then bought a second-hand Jaguar that he discovered had been the centrepiece of a murder case, the body of the victim having been found in the boot.
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He returned to live in Nigeria in 1981, setting up his own publishing firm, Delta Productions, which has published more than 600 titles. He was married three times: to Aileen, Ethel, and lastly Nneka, who survives him. He is also survived by the four children of his second marriage: Charles, a civil servant in Nigeria, Dillibe, a photographer, Stephen, also a civil servant in Nigeria, and Chito, a lawyer; and by the two children from his third marriage, Manuela and Jennifer Chinelo, who are both students.
Onyeama did not send any of his sons to Eton but, according to Dillibe Jr, he was intending that all four children from his second marriage would be educated in England, until his circumstances changed. “My father was open to returning to Eton to accept the apology he had been offered. He responded positively and wanted to make the trip. But he never did.”
Dillibe Onyeama, author, was born on January 6, 1951. He died of a heart attack on November 10, 2022, aged 71