Black History Month: Steve Stacey – GI’s son and football pioneer

In another life, it would have been Stacey’s home too.

His mother, Evelyn, had been 19 when she met Clarence Lee Sims of Kemper County. He had been one of the 240,000 African-Americans among the three million US troops stationed in the UK over the course of World War II.

Meeting in a local pub, not far from the Muller Orphanage that had served as US barracks, they had fallen in love. Steve was to become what the media would dub the war’s ‘brown babies’, one of around 2,000 children born to white British women and black American GIs.

Marriage between a white and black person was still illegal in many American states, and was a permission denied by Clarence’s – white – unit leader. The prospect of leaving for the US after the war when Clarence was sent home was raised, but never an option as far as Stacey’s mother was concerned.

“She knew what it would have been like,” Stacey, now 80, tells BBC Sport Wales, his Bristolian accent still proudly strong despite speaking from Australia where he has lived for the past four decades.

Strong is also how he describes his mother. It was she, with the help of his grandmother, who brought him up despite the inevitable glances, or worse, from disapprovers. Many ‘brown babies’ were sent away with little chance of adoption, and faced difficulties through life.