One of Liverpool's most talented boxers was not allowed to compete for a national championship title "he would have undoubtedly won" because of the colour of his skin.
Liverpool legend Peter Banasko was prevented from competing for a national title because of the Colour Bar - a ban on black British boxers competing for national titles, which had been instigated by the British Boxing Board of Control in 1911 and wasn't lifted until 1947.
His story along with those of other sporting heroes from Liverpool 8 are being brought together in a new exhibition at Liverpool Central Library.
Born in Liverpool in 1915, Peter Banasko attended St Malachy's School in Toxteth and the nearby boxing club of the same name. By the age of 14 he had competed in over 100 fights and was quickly garnering a fearsome reputation.
He became a professional boxer when he was 17 and won a range of titles.
However, he was banned from competing for a national title which, with his talent and reputation, many people believe he would easily have won.
Peter Banasko is just one of the many legendary black boxers that Liverpool has been home to over the years and the Colour Bar was just one aspect of the challenges that black boxers faced - the racism of public audiences was also at times endemic and insidious.
Despite the challenges, the achievements of Liverpool's black boxers over the years have been remarkable.
Their stories have been brought together for the first time by writer and journalist Louis Julienne and his colleagues Albert Fontenot and Ray Quarless at Heritage Development Company Liverpool.
Heritage Development Company Liverpool has now launched an exhibition for Black History Month, featuring 200 years of Liverpool-based Black boxers called Black Punch.
The exhibition will be at Liverpool Central Library until the end of the year. The group have also produced a book, which will be published at the end of this month.
The launch night was a packed-out event held at Liverpool Central Library and was attended by some of the boxers featured, including one of the most recent - Natasha Jonas , who in 2012 became the first woman ever to box competitively at the Olympic games.
Family members of some of the boxers also attended the launch, as well as recently-appointed Lord Mayor of Liverpool Anna Rothery, who became Liverpool's first black mayor just this year.
Louis and his colleagues pieced together the remarkable story of Liverpool's Black boxers through interviews with veteran boxers or their family members, and from archives both online and at Liverpool Central Library - a story which they trace from 1813 to the present day.
The story begins with the birth of James 'Jem' Wharton in Morocco in 1813.
At the age of just 12, James started working as a cabin boy, and by the early 1830s he was living in Liverpool and competing as a bare-knuckle boxer in epic bouts that could be up to 100 rounds long.
James was a remarkable middleweight boxer and won every one of his 89 fights, including 54 KOs.
He died in Liverpool in 1856 as a result of tuberculosis.
Since his astonishing run of boxing success, there were no fewer than 30 world championship titles won by Liverpool's black boxers over the following 200 years.
Some of the boxers highlighted in the exhibition include three members of the same family - Terry Snr, Nigel and Richie Wenton, who all competed and won on the same night at Kirkby Civic Suite in 1980 - making amateur boxing history and securing their entry into the Guinness Book of World Records.
Among the other famous names included are Hogan Bassey, the first boxer of Nigerian descent to win a world championship title, the legendary lightweight world championship boxer John Conteh, Joe Bygraves, Larry Paul and Tony Bellew.
Among the earlier boxers mentioned are Bob Smith, a middleweight boxer born in 1840, Harry Brown, who boxed between 1901 and 1912 and William Lawson, who was also known as Young Snowball and was a bantamweight boxer active between 1905 and 1916.
Frankie Brown, Dick Tiger, Richard and Allan Tanner, Ray and Steve Ako, Carl Speare, Jimmy Price, Noel Quarless, Sugar Gibiliru Jnr, Robin Read and Andy Palmer also feature in the exhibition - a long roll call of boxers whose achievements include not only 30 world titles, but also 17 British, Commonwealth and European Championship belts, a "staggering" level of success from just one small area of the city.
Louis Julienne, 72, spoke to the ECHO after the launch. He said: "This project is about a history of Liverpool-based black boxers, and the reason for that is we're concerned that the history of black people generally in Liverpool is highlighted and more widely known.
"What's remarkable is the amount of boxing talent that came out of a very small area in Liverpool - the south end - where the majority of black boxers were born or lived."
"There were a lot of challenges that boxers faced - the colour bar and the racism. Some boxers who get up into the ring and the crowd would shout things like 'kill the n****r' and 'get back to your own country'."
Louis added: "There was also the problem of exploitation of the boxers from managers. A lot of the boxers lived in poverty and went into boxing to try to escape from that poverty. Some did and some didn't."
"This project is so important because people don't know about them. We keep being told that we haven't got any history and it's important we tell people we do - we've been here since the 1800s as a continuous population - nobody knows that - as far as people are concerned we came with the Windrush.
"Kids don't know it, schools don't know it because they don't teach it - so we have a view of history that excludes black people's contribution let alone achievements."
"Heritage Development Company Liverpool is about making sure that history gets recorded, that we know about the challenges and achievements of Liverpool's black population over the years and the contribution we have made to the city and beyond."
Black Punch, a history of Liverpool-based Black boxers, is open on the 3rd Floor of Liverpool Central Library until the end of 2019. More information at https://www.facebook.com/HDCLpool/
