Research Guides: TRU Library Book Displays: Black History Month

On Display at TRU Library's Learning Commons

February is Black History Month

During Black History Month, we honour and amplify Black Canadians' voices and celebrate their achievements and contributions. The efforts of Black Canadians and their communities throughout history have greatly enriched Canada. It is important to realize that their role in Canada has largely been ignored as a key part of Canada’s history. While this should not be dedicated to one month alone, Black History Month is a time to learn more about these stories and the many important contributions they have made to this country's history and continued growth.

Learn more at "February is Black History Month" by Canadian Heritage, a department of the Government of Canada. This site includes information on noteworthy figures, significant events, addressing anti-Black racism, and more!

TRU Resources

Black History Month

"Where are you from?" : growing up African-Canadian in Vancouver by Gillian Creese
Call Number: FC 3847.9 .B6 C74 2020
ISBN: 9781487506797
Publication Date: 2020-01-06
Metro Vancouver is a diverse city where half the residents identify as people of colour, but only one percent of the population is racialized as Black. In this context, African-Canadians are both hyper-visible as Black, and invisible as distinct communities. Informed by feminist and critical race theories, and based on interviews with women and men who grew up in Vancouver, "Where Are You From?" recounts the unique experience of growing up in a place where the second generation seldom sees other people who look like them, and yet are inundated with popular representations of Blackness from the United States.
The African Canadian Legal Odyssey: Historical Essays by Barrington Walker
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9781442646896
Publication Date: 2012-11-13
The African Canadian Legal Odyssey explores the history of African Canadians and the law from the era of slavery until the early twenty-first century. This collection demonstrates that the social history of Black Canadians has always been inextricably bound to questions of law, and that the role of the law in shaping Black life was often ambiguous and shifted over time.
African Canadians in Union Blue: volunteering for the cause in the Civil War by Richard M. Reid
Call Number: E 540 .C25 R43 2015
ISBN: 9781606352557
Publication Date: 2015-01-01
When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, he also authorized the U.S. Army to recruit Black soldiers for the war effort. Nearly 200,000 men answered the call, and several thousand of them came from Canada. What compelled these men to leave the relative comfort and safety of home to fight in a foreign war? In African Canadians in Union Blue, Richard M. Reid sets out in search of an answer and discovers a group of men whose courage and contributions open a window on the changing understanding of the American Civil War and the ties that held Black communities together even as the borders around them shifted and were torn asunder.
Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada's Black Beauty Culture by Cheryl Thompson
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9781771123587
Publication Date: 2019-04-15
Beauty in a Box widens our understanding of the politics of Black hair. The book analyzes advertisements and articles from media—newspapers, advertisements, television, and other sources—that focus on Black communities in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, and Calgary. Beauty in a Box uses an interdisciplinary framework, engaging with African American history, critical race and cultural theory, consumer culture theory, media studies, Diasporic art history, Black feminism, visual culture, film studies, and political economy to explore the history of Black beauty culture in both Canada and the United States.
Being Black: essays by Althea Prince; Insomniac Press Staff
Call Number: FC 106 .B6 P75 2001
ISBN: 1895837774
Publication Date: 2001-09-25
Following in the highly personal tradition of essayists such as Dionne Brand and bell hooks, Althea Prince culls thirty years of lived experience into an important new collection, Being Black. A writer and sociologist, Prince tackles the complacency she sees in some manifestations of Black Canadian culture -- such as Toronto's popular Caribana festival -- as well as in white society's attitudes towards Black culture, as revealed by Prince's involvement with the notorious Writers' Union of Canada-sponsored Writing Thru Race conference.
Black. Queer. Southern. Women: An Oral History by E. Patrick Johnson
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9781469641096
Publication Date: 2018-11-12
Drawn from the life narratives of more than seventy African American queer women who were born, raised, and continue to reside in the American South, this book powerfully reveals the way these women experience and express racial, sexual, gender, and class identities — all linked by a place where such identities have generally placed them on the margins of society. These breathtakingly rich life histories show afresh how Black female sexuality is and always has been an integral part of the patchwork quilt that is southern culture.
The Black Atlantic Reconsidered: Black Canadian Writing, Cultural History, and the Presence of the Past by Winfried Siemerling
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9780773545076
Publication Date: 2015-05-08
Readers are often surprised to learn that Black writing in Canada is over two centuries old. Ranging from letters, editorials, sermons, and slave narratives to contemporary novels, plays, poetry, and non-fiction, Black Canadian writing represents a rich body of literary and cultural achievement. Arguing that Black writing in Canada is deeply imbricated in a historic transnational network, Siemerling explores the powerful presence of Black Canadian history, slavery, and the Underground Railroad, and the Black Diaspora in the work of these authors.
Black Canadians: history, experience, social conditions by Joseph Mensah
Call Number: FC 106 .B6 M45 2002
ISBN: 1552660907
Publication Date: 2004-09-01
This work examines more than 300 years of Black Canadian history, from the first migration of slaves, Black loyalists, and Civil War refugees to the expansive movement brought about by the establishment of the point system in 1967. Venturing beyond established orthodoxies and simplistic solutions to discuss the contentious ethno-racial problems in Canada, this pointed critique addresses the geography of the settlements and the labor market, sports management, race and ethnic relations, and employment equity vis-à-vis the Black experience.
The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema From Fodder to Oscar by Robin R. Means Coleman; Mark H. Harris
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9781982186531
Publication Date: 2023-02-07
The Black Guy Dies First explores the Black journey in modern horror cinema, from the fodder epitomized by Spider Baby to the Oscar-winning cinematic heights of Get Out and beyond. This eye-opening book delves into the themes, tropes, and traits that have come to characterize Black roles in horror since 1968, a year in which race made national headlines in iconic moments from the enactment of the 1968 Civil Rights Act and Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in April. This timely book is a must-read for cinema and horror fans alike.
Blacks in Canada: A History by Robin W. Winks; George Elliott Clarke (Foreword by)
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9780228007890
Publication Date: 2021-04-15
Blacks in Canada: A History journeys from the introduction of slavery in 1628 to the first wave of Caribbean immigration in the 1950s and 1960s. The longevity of this text is due to an impressive array of primary and secondary materials that illuminate the experiences of Black immigrants to Canada. Crucially, this text investigates the French and English periods of slavery, the abolitionist movement in Canada, and the role played by Canadians in the broader continental antislavery crusade, as well as Canadian adaptations to nineteenth- and twentieth-century racial mores.
The education of African Canadian children : critical perspectives by Awad Ibrahim and Ali A. Abdi (editors)
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9780773548459
Publication Date: 2016
Hundreds of thousands of African Canadian children demand and deserve quality education that promotes success both within and outside of school. The Education of African Canadian Children critically responds to and comments on the historical, cultural, institutional, and informational contexts and problems of the learning lives of these children. The authors offer a comprehensive history of African Canadians’ encounters with the education system, the current challenges they are facing, and opportunities for more inclusive and democratic educational practices that will better serve this population
Harriet’s Legacies : Race, Historical Memory, and Futures in Canada by Ronald Cummings (Editor); Natalee Caple (Editor)
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9780228010654
Publication Date: 2022-05-15
Historic freedom fighter and conductor of the Underground Railroad Harriet Tubman risked her life to ferry enslaved people from America to freedom in Canada. Her legacy instigates and orients this exploration of the history of Black lives and the future of collective struggle in Canada. Considering questions of culture, community, and futures, Harriet's Legacies explores what happened in the wake of Tubman's legacy and situates Canada as a key part of that dialogue.
Not Straight, Not White: Black Gay Men From the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis by Kevin Mumford
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9781469626840
Publication Date: 2016-03-14
This compelling book recounts the history of Black gay men from the 1950s to the 1990s, tracing how the major movements of the times—from civil rights to Black power to gay liberation to AIDS activism—helped shape the cultural stigmas that surrounded race and homosexuality. Drawing on an extensive archive of newspapers, pornography, and film, as well as government documents, organizational records, and personal papers, Mumford sheds new light on four volatile decades in the protracted battle of Black gay men for affirmation and empowerment in the face of pervasive racism and homophobia.
Teaching Black History to White People by Leonard N. Moore
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9781477324851
Publication Date: 2021-09-14
Teaching Black History to White People delivers an accessible and engaging primer on the Black experience in America. It poses provocative questions, such as “Why is the teaching of Black history so controversial?” and “What came first: slavery or racism?” These questions don't have easy answers, and Moore insists that embracing discomfort is necessary for engaging in open and honest conversations about race. Moore includes a syllabus and other tools for actionable steps that white people can take to move beyond performative justice and toward racial reparations, healing, and reconciliation.
We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women's History by Peggy Bristow (Editor)
Call Number: (ebook)
ISBN: 9780802068811
Publication Date: 1994-08-18
Despite the increasing scope and authority of women's studies, the role of Black women in Canada's history has remained largely unwritten and unacknowledged. This silence supports the common belief that Black people have only recently arrived in Canada and that racism is also a fairly recent development. This book sets the record straight. The six essays collected here explore three hundred years of Black women in Canada, from the seventeenth century to the immediate post-Second World War period. This long overdue history will prove welcome reading for anyone interested in Black history and race relations.