“They Were Very Threatened by Us”: Black Canadian Women and the “Not-Quite” Spaces of Belonging, 1950s–80s

In her work, Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle, Black cultural theorist, Katherine McKittrick analyzes the politics of place and placing for Black women in Canada. She argues that Black women occupied ‘not-quite’ spaces of
black femininity where their lives and histories have been unacknowledged and expendable. She further explains that, “The ‘not-quite’ spaces of Black femininity are unacknowledged spaces of sexual violence, stereotype, and socio-spatial marginalization:
erased, erasable, hidden, resistant geographies and women that are, due to persistent and public forms of objectification, not readily decipherable.” In occupying these spaces, Black women also developed their own ‘insurgent’ geographies where they addressed their space and place. As a result, Black women developed a different sense of belonging that offered alternative places of empowerment.

Therefore, this presentation seeks to document and uncover Black Canadian women's stories and activism with particular attention to intersections of race, culture, religion, identity, nationality, sexuality and gender to transform how Black Women's lives are
articulated and represented. I will highlight the ways historians are working to examine and reinterpret Black Canadian women's activism through diverse methodological approaches and sources that scholars use both inside and outside of archival spaces to locate Black women's lived experiences along the margins.