The history of Montreal’s Black community goes as far back as the very first French explorers to settle along the St. Larry River valley. The community has dealt with slavery, oppression, injustice, and both informal and formal racism. Yet, it is a community that has not only endured, it has thrived, despite significant challenges. It is also a community that was very much connected to the emerging civil rights movement in the US, and it is a community that embraced its own struggle, though a struggle that was very much unique to the geopolitical situation of Quebec in the post-Second World War period. While the community was certainly active in fighting for equality no affair highlighted galvanized it more than the Sir George Williams Affair in January 1969, an event that some argue, set off one Montreal’s Black renaissance. 

Book recommendation: 

Unsettling the Great White North: Black Canadian History by Funke Aladejebi and Michele Johnson. Univ. of Toronto Press, 2022 

https://utorontopress.com/9781487529178/unsettling-the-great-white-north/

 

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