BLACKNESS AND BRITISH ‘FAIR PLAY’: BURGEONING BLACK SOCIAL ACTIVISM IN ONTARIO AND ITS GRASSROOTS RESPONSES TO THE CANADIAN COLOUR LINE, 1919-1939
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Authors
Shaw, Melissa
Date
Type
thesis
Language
eng
Keyword
Black Canadians , Ontario , social activism , Black women , interwar period , anti-Black racism
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Abstract
“Blackness and British ‘Fair Play’: Burgeoning Black Social Activism in Ontario and its Grassroots Responses to the Canadian Colour Line, 1919-1939” centres community-building as an effective method to reject the notion of Blackness as racial alterity and second-class citizenship in Canada. This project highlights the understudied and informal everyday acts of resistance that Black Canadian women crafted to fight anti-Black racism during the interwar period. After identifying how white Canadians expressed the colour line during the 1920s and 1930s, I consider how Black people pragmatically responded in Ontario. In this study, I argue that Black women worked as community leaders to engender a shared intra-racial collective among Black Canadians of varying backgrounds. Their dynamic leadership changed over time, developing through church fundraising social activities, starting church youth clubs, to launching much-needed leisure, recreation, and learning activities premised on a Black international scope and a Pan-Africanist ideology. A close examination of oral history interviews, church records, activist organization records, and newspapers offers a thoughtful consideration of historical contingencies. These factors informed the everyday, local ways that Black people in Ontario challenged their racialized alterity and ostracization in Canadian society.
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ProQuest PhD and Master's Theses International Dissemination Agreement
Intellectual Property Guidelines at Queen's University
Copying and Preserving Your Thesis
This publication is made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws without written authority from the copyright owner.