Louis Sterling was born in January 1949 in the parish of St. Ann in Jamaica. At 14, he came to Manchester to join his mother.

 

His mother, Loretta Allen, was a nurse at Prestwich Hospital in north Manchester. The family lived in Victoria Park, and he went to school locally. After high school, he attended Bradford University. In 1971, he completed his Bachelor of Science degree at Bradford. He qualified as a teacher with a PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate in Education) from the University of Manchester. He then returned to Jamaica, where he taught at Excelsior High School and lectured at the University of the West Indies (UWI). He completed a Masters in Education at UWI, Mona Campus. He was also an examiner for the Caribbean Examination Board.

In the early 90s, the University of the West Indies and the Association of Commonwealth Universities awarded Louis an academic staff scholarship. He returned to Manchester to the Faculty of Economics and Social Studies at the Victoria University of Manchester to begin his doctoral studies. In 1992, he became Dr. Louis Sterling, with his PhD entitled From St Elizabeth, Jamaica to Manchester, England - the Dynamics of Migration. It runs to 480 pages, including 21 pages of reference book titles. Just think about the hours and the effort involved in reading all that material and selecting relevant sections to support his ideas!

The dissertation covers the period 1954 to 1962. This is no dry, cerebral work - it echoes with the voices of the Windrush people - their hopes, their disappointments, their resistance in the face of the barriers they met in the so-called Mother Country and their aspirations for their children. It is Louis’s own story writ large in the experiences of the people he interviewed.

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In the early 2000s, Mrs. Da-Cocodia introduced Dr. Louis to the Caroiocca Education Trust. In 2009, as part of the Manchester Conference for
Black Parents, Children and Young People, Dr. Louis led a workshop entitled Building the Culture of Success. Here, he made the case for actively working to counter the negative image of young black people as ‘failing’ and a ‘problem’ by celebrating the successes of black students and developing the strategies that lead to academic success. He emphasised the role of parents in fostering independence, self-regulation, motivation and a strong work ethic, in this way sowing the seeds of success.

After the conference, Louis was invited to become a trustee of the LDET. He served for many years until his health began to fail. During the isolation of the Covid lockdowns, members of the Trust, Diane Watt, Tom Nelson and Angela Ankeli, maintained a close link with Louis and his mother Loretta Allen.

 

Cut off from their other networks, the family was being wonderfully supported by their neighbour, Lesley Holden, who acted as the link with the Trust volunteers. Louis’s health was deteriorating, and sadly, he had to go into a nursing home where he now lives. Not long after, in January 2022, his mother, Loretta, passed away. I’d like to mention here Loretta’s immense pride in her son and her unstinting support for him during and after his studies and through the period of his increasingly poor
health. After her passing, while the family was preparing to pack up the contents of Louis and Loretta’s house, they discovered Louis’s will among the documents. In it was the bequest of his extensive library to the Louise
DaCocodia Education Trust.