Black History Month personal heroes

October is Black History Month. As part of our regular feature throughout this month we present a few prominent UK people and their personal black heroes....

The king of hearts by Diane Abbott

My hero, Nelson Mandela, was a vital role model, a rare example of a black person at the very highest level of politics

Nelson Mandela was the first symbol of strength for black people who was alive and kicking and relevant in my world. He inspired me to see the importance of political strength and political presence for black people.

It was one of the most heart-rending moments of my life when his statue was unveiled on Parliament Square in August 2007 - the final evidence that what black people do matters to British politics. The surge of hope that Mandela carried has now been taken up by Barack Obama, and it gives me great pleasure to think that for the next generation, the idea of a black presidential candidate will be normalised. That very notion, which when looked at objectively is so simple, will in fact change the lives of thousands of black people around the world. I'm very happy that the next generation will not have to struggle as I did to find black people in the highest of places.

A hero of the Crimean war by Tim Campbell

Mary Seacole's entrepreneurial skill and dedication to helping others through nursing makes her a perfect role model

Mary Seacole's courageous efforts, overcoming adversity and discrimination in order to follow her desire to help others, reminds me of the lengths my own mother went to as she sacrificed so much so that we, her children, could have the greatest start in life.

Born Mary Jane Grant in 1805 to a free black Jamaican, Seacole was taught the art of Creole medicine by her mother, who had set up a boarding house in Kingston where many of the residents were disabled European soldiers and sailors, often suffering from the yellow fever. This early education stayed with Seacole and later in her fifties, during the Crimean war, she attempted to use her talents to support British soldiers.

Initially hoping to support the nursing efforts of Florence Nightingale, who was in Turkey, Seacole was rejected at least four times. Undeterred, she made her own way to Turkey where she set up the British Hotel at her own cost. Here, she provided food and care to British soldiers close to battle lines.

After the war, having survived bankruptcy, Seacole was awarded several medals for bravery. Her story is a huge inspiration to me - not only is she one of the most famous Jamaicans to have ever lived, but her entrepreneurial skill and dedication to helping others makes her a perfect role model for me in my own work with young people.

Seacole had no excuses; just a focus on getting the job done - a tenacity that earned her the respect of her peers. If I can leave a legacy half as powerful as hers I will have done a good job. Mary Seacole - a true black hero.

The outsider's outsider by Bonnie Greer

My hero, James Baldwin, introduced me to the idea of claiming an identity through exile. Despite censure, it brought him peace

I don't remember when I began to read the work of James Baldwin. I just recall having to read Another Country under my bedcover by flashlight, and leaving it around accidentally on my father's chair, and him giving it back to me without saying a word. This was a kind of approval, and released me to read everything the man had written, and caused me to look forward to everything he was about to publish.

I once shared a taxi with him to O'Hare airport outside my native Chicago; and while sipping a paper cup half-filled with bourbon, he told me that he could no longer write, that America had made him quiet and filled him with dread. I knew then that I would spend the rest of my life outside my native land, and so it was exile - African-American exile - that began to hold an attraction for me.

There is a movement now among some African-American academics and writers to downgrade Baldwin as not being a part of the American experience, as being some sort of traitor, of having deserted the brothers and sisters, of what Henry Louis Gates once accused me and fellow black ex-pats of doing: "Writing our own version of An Ode To A Grecian Urn." But there is an old gospel song with the line: "Shoes. Shoes. All God's chillun' got shoes."

Mobility, with its freedom to self-create, was what slavery took from us. Baldwin broke through, and in breaking through he discovered, named, and lived a truth full of a contradiction that had its own kind of beauty. He did not follow Flaubert's admonition to live the life of the bourgeois in order to live violently in the mind. He did the opposite. In doing so, he found the peace and selfhood that his country had denied him.

The power of words by Kwame Kwei-Armah

My black hero, Malcolm X, taught me to find and destroy the hate within

I recall sitting reading the first few chapters of the autobiography of Malcolm X with awe and amazement. My older cousin had played me a cassette with snippets of Malcolm's famous speech, The Ballot or the Bullet, so I was already primed; but it was the searing honesty, the crystal articulations of an angry man, a spiritual man, a man of the people, which instantly challenged and motivated me.

One thing I do remember, rather ashamedly, was that I had a "wet look" at the time, and after reading Malcolm's explanation of "conking" I cut my hair as low as it could fashionably be and swore never to straighten my hair again. My black hero of all time is the man who showed me that manhood was not only about turning the other cheek to those that hate you, but finding and destroying the hate within.

The visionary in our midst by Benjamin Zephaniah

My hero was one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century, who taught me to think as I read. And he lived in Brixton

CLR James was a visionary, one of the greatest intellectuals who ever lived - and for most of his life he lived in Brixton. Unlike Martin Luther King, or Malcolm X, we had him right here - I even met him. He really is one of our very own heroes.

He was the first person who made me unafraid of the word "intellectual". I used to think these were people who just wanted to baffle me with science, or came from another planet. I felt intellectuals were something I'm not.

But learning about CLR taught me to think critically; to read between the lines, to think as I read (I wasn't a great reader at school).

For example, when I was young there were Sus laws being enforced [which allowed police to arrest people based purely on a police officer's suspicion], there was the far-right National Front, and I just used to think that there were "people like them" and "people like us". But through CLR I discovered the whole idea of taking a political stand and knowing why you've taken it. That you don't just hate the police, you have to think: what are they there for, and why do we need them?

He lived for almost a century and his breadth of knowledge amazed me: not only his understanding of politics - he could talk about it for ever and ever, amen - but he could talk with just as much passion about cricket (and I don't even like cricket!).