In the 1980s, Doreen Johnson says, it wasn’t easy to be a Black woman in Dundas or Hamilton.
“Racism was still something that was always there, even though others were saying it wasn’t,” Johnson told CBC Hamilton this week, looking back at the work of Black women in the region over the decades.
Johnson’s work fighting racism and sexism has been recognized with community service awards from the federal Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration (known as the Ministry of Citizenship in 1991 when Johnson got her award), the provincial Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services and the City of Hamilton.
She said there were fewer Black women in the Hamilton area then, and many barriers to professional and social success.
“It was tough,” recalled Johnson, in a phone interview. “We were not really welcome.”
Those barriers haven’t disappeared, but have lessened, thanks to many Black women fighting for equality and access to spaces where they’d been excluded, said Johnson, one of the women featured in a new book, Standing Tall: Black Women’s Stories of Triumph in Hamilton.
The book, a project of the Afro Canadian Caribbean Association (ACCA), was launched earlier this month and is available from the association for $30.
“It’s a great honour that I was featured in the book so the younger generation and others may know that Black women were able to get things done in spite of what was happening in Canada,” Johnson said.
Today’s Special actor, market vendor among those featured
The book is intended to be the first in a series. Its sales support ACCA programs.
The women featured in its pages have succeeded at high levels in areas including science, media, leadership and business.
They include:
- Fleurette Osborne, one of the founding members of the Congress of Black Women of Canada;
- Chloe Cooley, who was enslaved in the Niagara Region in the 1700s and was instrumental in stopping the slave trade in Canada;
- Sandi Bell, who sits on the Ontario Human Rights Commission;
- Wilma Morrison, a key figure in creating the Niagara Freedom Trail tour;
- Nerene Virgin, who was a journalist, actor, and host of TV show Today’s Special;
- Eleanor Rodney, a teacher who pioneered the first credit course on African Studies and Black History in the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board;
- Tilly Johnson, a long-time business owner at the Hamilton Farmer’s Market who launched a scholarship for Black youth in 1997;
- Juliet Daniel, a McMaster University professor studying the causes of cancer who discovered a new gene;
- Beatrice McLean, a teacher and nurse who was a founding member of the ACCA; and
- Evelyn Myrie, an anti-racism educator and activist.
‘They stood tall and gave us voices’
In her introduction to the book, Patricia Daenzer describes the women in its pages as “outstanding female leaders who reshaped the way forward for today’s generation by enshrining pathways to social progress, political awareness and policy remediation in Hamilton’s civic relations,” she writes.
“They are honoured and celebrated in this series because they stood tall and gave us voices which we refuse to be silenced.”
Daenzer, a retired social work professor whose work examines how race, gender and social status influence the pursuit of justice, said these women will be remembered for challenging the status quo and questioning practices that diminish Black lives.
“In our Twenty First Century, Black women are still under-assumed, disparaged and subject to lower expectations forged more than one century ago,” she writes.
“Heralding their accomplishments is intended to remind those who need reminding that the determination of Black women who led and travelled the underground railroad to Canada has grown in intensity and numbers and is forever the way forward.”
For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.
