"We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up": Essays in African Canadian Women's History

Margaret Conrad is a history professor at Acadia University, and the
editor of Making Adjustments: Change and Continuity in Planter Nova
Scotia, 1759-1800.

The six essays published in this important book finally break the
silence surrounding the history of African-Canadian women. As pioneering
studies, they make the point that it is a mistake to generalize gender
experience across racial boundaries. Black women in Canada have a
different relationship to immigration, work, culture, and the state, and
these differences matter profoundly.

In her richly textured essay on the early history of women in Nova
Scotia, Sylvia Hamilton documents the long tradition of black women in
Canada, who were firmly rooted even before the arrival of the first
major wave of African-Canadian immigrants following the American
Revolution. Three essays focus on the era surrounding the passage of the
U.S. Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, which stimulated the largest
19th-century migration of African Canadians to British North America
(most came to what is now Ontario). For reasons that seem logical once
explained by Adrienne Shadd, women constituted only 20 percent of those
who took advantage of the Underground Railroad. Their numbers, as Peggy
Bristow shows, were inversely proportional to their contribution to the
communities, such as Buxton and Chatham, where many of them settled. As
Afua Cooper shows in her study of educationist Mary Bibb, women were
integral to the struggle for the dignity denied them in greater or
lesser degrees everywhere in North America. Indeed, as Dionne Brand
reveals, Canada in the 20th century lagged behind the United States in
addressing racial discrimination. The nursing profession, for example,
remained closed to black women until after World War II, and only labor
shortages caused by the war enabled black women to take up factory jobs.
In the final essay, Linda Carty offers a useful survey of the role of
the state, particularly with respect to policies on labor and
immigration, in marginalizing black women.

In addition to carving out large themes and offering cogent analysis,
the authors provide a comprehensive bibliography of sources to guide
others in their research. Brimming with insights and information, this
book serves as the starting point for anyone interested in the history
of African-Canadian women.