Black History in Canada

During Black History Month, Canadians celebrate the many achievements and contributions of Black Canadians who throughout history have done so much to make Canada the culturally diverse, compassionate and prosperous nation it is today.

For more information on Black History Month visit the Government of Canada's website https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/campaigns/black-history-month/about.html

Start your research here:

• Canadian Encyclopedia - Black History in Canada: 1900-1960
• Canadian Who's Who
• Canadiana
• Canada's Black population: Education, labour and resilience
• Diversity of the Black population in Canada: An overview

Innovators:

(highlighted Black lives from the Canadian Encyclopedia)

• Lincoln Alexander

• Jean Augustine

• Rosemary Brown

• Anne Cools

• Mathieu Da Costa

• Viola Davis Desmond

• Ferguson Jenkins

• Michaëlle Jean

• Willie O'Ree

• Calvin Ruck

Education

• See Us, Learn Us: Teaching about the Black Canadian Experience

• A Black People's History of Canada - Canadian Heritage

Film Resources

• African Canadian Online - Film & Theatre (York U)
• NFB - Study Guide: Exploring Black communities in Canada through film
• NFB Black Communities in Canada: A rich history
• Films about the Black Experience in Canada (U of Calgary)

Filmmakers

Sylvia Hamilton

• Black Mother Black Daughter
• The Little Black School House

Jennifer Hodge de Silva

• Home Feeling: A Struggle for community

Jennifer Holmes

• Love, Sex and Eating the Bones
• Home Again
• Stateless

Music

• African Canadian Online - Music (York U)

Select Books

• Black Canadians: history, experiences, social conditions
• Blacks in Canada: a long history
• Blacks in Canada: in search of promise - a bibliographic guide to the history of Blacks in Canada
• BlackInSchool
• Minority within a minority: Black Francophone immigrants and the dynamics of power and resistance
• North of the color line, migration and Black resistance in Canada, 1870-1955
• Policing Black lives: state violence in Canada from slavery to the present
• The African Diaspora in Canada: negotiating identity & belonging
• The Underground Railroad: Next stop, Toronto
• Towards Freedom - the African Canadian Experience
• Viola Desmond's Canada: a history of Blacks and racial segregation in the promised land
• We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up: essays in African Canadian women's history
• Women in the "Promised Land": essays in African Canadian History

Databases

• America, History and Life
• Black Thought and Culture
• Canadian Business and Current Affairs
• Canadiana
• Caribbean History and Culture, 1535-1920
• CPI.Q
• Digital Library of the Caribbean
• Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice
• Slavery in America and the World
• Sociology Database

Search All Databases

Black history organizations and educational resources - Government of Canada

• Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia
• Black Loyalist Heritage Centre
• British Columbia Black History Awareness Society
• Federation of Black Canadians
• New Brunswick Black History Society
• Ontario Black History Society (OBHS)