Using case studies of my experiences navigating the difficult terrain of Canadian archives, as well as, black Canadian history examples such as Nova Scotia’s Viola Desmond and the No. 2 Construction Battalion, Vancouver’s Hogan’s Alley, Alberta’s Amber Valley and Montreal’s Sir George Williams University (present-day Concordia University), my article elucidates the visibility/invisibility of blackness in Canadian archival collections. It also explains why it is so important for researchers doing work on black subjects to begin to understand the logic of archives, working against (and through them) to recuperate historical absences, and to shed light on presences.
Between 1919 and 1962, the Aunt Jemima advertising trademark made frequent appearances in Canadian print media. While scholars have documented how the image of the faithful, happy-to-please Black slave woman captivated the American cultural imagination, the advertising trademark has received much less scholarly attention in Canada. As Canadian culture modernized in the 1920s, withstood a Depression and the Second World War, and witnessed the birth of the suburbs, Aunt Jemima advertisements reflected the changing milieu. Using textual and visual analysis, this essay argues that English-language media, primarily the Toronto Daily Star and Chatelaine magazine, publications which had the highest circulations in early twentieth-century Canada, were significant outlets for White middle-class Canadians. The presence of Aunt Jemima, a prototypical “Mammy” plucked from the plantation South, thus stands as an example of how race, class, and gender were constructed in English-language media, and by extension, dominant Canadian society in the first half of the twentieth century.
In 1923, an African Canadian newspaper entitled The Dawn of Tomorrow began publication in London, Ontario, billing itself as “Devoted to the Interests of the Darker Races.” The Dawn wrote about collective racial uplift, Canada’s black church, and about African Canadian “firsts,” whether in the fields of entertainment or nursing, in the Boy Scouts, or in the integration of segregated workplaces — triumphs that Canada’s white newspapers generally ignored. Challenging the notion that African Canadians did not have a black press comparable to the African American press in the United States, this article examines the editorial content, photographic journalism, and advertisements in The Dawn from its foundation to 1971, when it ceased publication. I argue that through its editorials, The Dawn played an instrumental role in cultivating a sense of community among blacks in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. This article also provides critiques of de facto Jim Crow laws in Canada, while highlighting the specific ways the black press combated pervasive racism with editorials about racial uplift, community advancement, civic engagement, and black entrepreneurship.
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