The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - How Black Liberation Movements Crossed Borders

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

How did Pan-African thought spread through North America in the twentieth century? The proliferation of Black liberation movements is explored in a new book called "Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America" written by McGill University historian Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey (Nii Laryea Osabu I, Atrékor Wé Oblahii kè Oblayéé Mantsè).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Matt Nethersole. And I'm Tiff Lam. From TVO Podcasts, this is Queries. This season, we're asking, when it comes to defending your beliefs, how far is too far? We follow one story from the boardroom to the courtroom. And seek to understand what happens when beliefs collide. Where does freedom of religion end and freedom from discrimination begin? That's this season on Queries, In Good Faith, a TVO original podcast.

Follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts. helps provide learning resources, in-depth journalism, award-winning documentaries, and fun educational kids programming. Make a gift of $100 or more to receive a TVO tote bag. And please consider donating online to avoid mail delays and ensure you receive your charitable tax receipt for this year. Visit tvo.me slash end of year to make a difference today. How much do Canadians know about the history of Black liberation movements in this country? In his book, Cross-Border Cosmopolitans, the making of a Pan-African North America, author Wendell Nilaye Ajete traces the history and influence of Pan-African thought across Canada, the US and the Caribbean.

He is also William Dawson Associate Professor at McGill University. His book won the Canadian Historical Association, Best Scholarly Book in Canadian History. He is also the first black historian to win the 2024 Governor General's History Award for Scholarly Research. Congratulations and welcome, Wendell. It's nice to have you in the studio. Thank you so much, Sam. It's my pleasure to be here.

This book, it's very, very thick in detail, the amount of research that you must have gone through. This book, it's very, very thick in detail, the amount of research that you must have gone through. Why were you drawn to this area of research? Thank you. That's an excellent prompt, because it reminds me of all the different hands that have shaped my trajectory as a little boy growing up in the city and sort of metropolitan Toronto, I mean, Mississauga as well,

and then going off to the United States for two doctoral studies. But specifically a lot of my African Canadian elders and mentors as well who were of Caribbean extraction, continental African extraction, Nova Scotian or Canadian extraction, and then American extraction. And so these are men and women who have seen Canada evolve and change over the generations. And it was a process of getting bits and pieces from them at different stages of my life that basically kept pushing me towards a particular understanding of what

the Canadian experience was. And lastly, I'll add that I had an amazing black professor, my only one at the University of Toronto as an undergraduate, named Dr. Sheldon Taylor, who taught African-Canadian and Caribbean history. And in his course as a sophomore around like 2005, I mean, it literally set my mind ablaze in terms of the possibilities of history,

and Canadian history and African-Canadian history, US history as a tool of social change. I love that, the possibilities, right? Because we want to instill in our kids and everybody that history is full of so much wonder. I wanted to start the conversation though by going over some terms. When you say Pan-African, what is it and when you refer to Pan-Africanisms in the book, what does this include? Indeed.

So Pan-Africanism in the context of the Atlantic world, in the context of the last 500 years, so more or less the making and the rise of the Atlantic world. Pan-Africanism means the unity of African peoples, of black people, unity for the purposes of establishing a free black soil or free black homeland. And principally, that's the African continent. Pan-Africanism in this sort of early modern context

was really crystallized and refined because of the experiences of transatlantic slavery, where Africans from mostly coast Atlantic Africa who came together as a result of the Middle Passage, whether they were Fon, they were Yoruba, they were Gaon, like my peoples, they were Asante, they were Fulani, sometimes Africans from around sort of southern Africa and East Africa. But the process of transatlantic slavery

brought them together so that instead of identifying principally with their ethno-cultural markers, they start to perceive themselves vis-a-vis Europeans or vis-a-vis white people as black. And so this is sort of the making of pan-Africanism. And it would feel the resistance against transatlantic slavery. It would fuel resistance against forms of anti-black subordination or subjugation.

I think in the past, when people heard the term Pan-African or Pan-Africanism, it was associated with black militarism. And within the black community, you mentioned that Pan-Africanism is the unity of black people. Black people are not a monolith. Growing up in Toronto I met a lot of people from the Caribbean who were not happy to be included with if people said you're from Africa. They weren't proud of that. And I understand that too because even as a young African growing up in Canada when the idea that if you're from Africa, you're living in trees, you're swimming, you know, the stereotypes

of what Africa is, there was that kind of push to say, well, I'm not African. So within that context, what would the community for Pan-Africanism then be? In the Canadian- Like acknowledging that black communities are not monolithic. Indeed. So Pan-Africanists understood that black communities were heterogeneous, meaning very diverse in terms of our tongue, the languages we speak, in terms of religion, in terms of our various cultures and life ways that the African continent is exceptionally

heterogeneous, meaning that those of course who would be transported via transatlantic slavery to the Americas or the New World brought all types of identities together. And so the inherent diversity and multicultural and sort of the various multiple ways of being a human and being black is understood within Pan-Africanism. And so it was actually not Africans on the continent, but Africans in like, whether they're in Brazil, Africans in Cuba, Africans in Saint-Domingue, which would come IET or Haiti, Africans in Jamaica,

Africans in the Mississippi Delta, or Africans in Nova Scotia. As you know, our fellow compatriots identify as African Nova Scotians, not Black Nova Scotians, right? And so it was this understanding that to be African is to be diverse. But in that diversity, there was a unity of purpose. And the purpose, or objective, or end game

was that Africans or Black people were working towards overcoming forms of white domination and anti-black racism. And when we talk about cosmopolitan, what do we mean? Excellent question. So cosmopolitan, regarding the African spirit, the founding father of African American history named George Washington Williamson, a very noteworthy name. Incidentally, he was the first person who would alert the world of King Leopold's genocide

in the Congo Basin in the late 19th century, and the person who coined the term crimes against humanity, a black man from the United States. But George Washington Williams, in his foundational book on the African-American experience coming out of From Bondage to Freedom, noted that Africans, and I quote, Africans since antiquity have always been a cosmopolitan people.

So there's this sort of basic general understanding and intuitive understanding that African peoples are very multilingual. I only speak like one additional African language, unlike my mom and dad who speak like multiple languages. I know, it's a shame my auntie speaks nine languages. Which is like the norm. Right, it's normal.

And when I came to Canada, I spoke three African languages. Brilliant. English is my fourth language. Brilliant. Brilliant. And so I'm lacking on my African bona fides. But Washington was alluding to the fact that Africans understood the process of being local,

both local and global. And this is cosmopolitanism in its purest form, that you can be local and you can be global at the same time. But this is also pan-Africanism, that I can be in Montreal, I can be in Nova Scotia, Halifax, or Preston, North Preston. But I can also be part of a global community. It's not about the borders. It's not about borders. I'm not a person who's been to Africa, I'm not a person who's been to Africa, I'm not a person who's been to Africa, I'm not a person who's been to Africa, I'm not a person who's been to Africa, I'm not a person who's been to Africa,

I'm not a person who's been to Africa, I'm not a person who's been to Africa, I'm not a person who's been to Africa, I'm not a person who's been to Africa, I'm not a person who's been to Africa, I'm not a person who's been to Africa, I'm not a person who's been to Africa, I'm not a person who's been to Africa, I'm not a person who's been to Africa, I'm not a person who's been to Africa, I'm not a person who's been to Africa, I'm not a person who's been to Africa, understanding of nation-states is injurious to the African personality and African self-determination. I mean, this has nothing to do with the book, but the fact that if you live on the continent of Africa, many countries need visas to go to different countries, which I think is...

It is, again, counterintuitive, but it actually relates to elements of the book because there were activists on the continent who wanted an Africa that was unified, because that was the greatest pan-African dream, that Africa would be united under one flag, notwithstanding the various languages, cultures, identity, that African peoples are one people. I wanted to read a passage from the book that speaks directly to the idea of crossing borders.

And in the book, you write, in many instances, crossing borders was more than an economic decision. It was an act of solidarity, intimacy, and survival. Border crossing provided black men and women in North America with an exit strategy and release valve when the pressures of anti-black racism and disillusionment proved overwhelming at home. Knowing and understanding the racial landscape

in North America became a matter of knowing and navigating an unwelcoming home. How did this idea of ideas and movements across borders happen? The process of border crossing is, in so many ways, as I noted in the book, a process of survival. And so when we think about African peoples on the North American mainland, meaning Canada, the United

States, Mexico is included as well, and also the Caribbean basin, that the ways black people and black communities achieved a semblance of freedom was to move. And the process of moving meant you can reinvent yourself. The process of moving meant when things are bad here, you might seek greener pastures elsewhere. And so during slavery and the various forms of bondage

and unfreedom to which black people were subjected, we noticed that whenever black people sought freedom, principally it was through their feet, right? To engage, become fugitives, right? Or fugitives from slavery. So they would travel elsewhere, relocate, cross international boundaries, whether they're traveling south into Mexico or north into what was then Upper Canada, Lower Canada, or British North America, meaning Canada. When you think about that journey, how terrifying it must have been.

But I guess it must have been more terrifying to stay where you were as opposed to trying to cross the border. Indeed. And we're talking about people who had very limited options. But the process of seeking to move and relocate was in so many ways a recurring theme of black freedom. You have so many great stories in this book of so many figures that we don't really know about and the contributions that they've given to Canadian history. And you start your book with someone called Juanita Deshield.

Who was she and why did you start the book with her? Indeed. So Juanita Deshield, or Dr. Deshield, she obtained a doctorate and worked as a psychologist for many years before retiring. So she was an African-Canadian in the Montreal community, from the Montreal community, born circa 1913, the first African-Canadian woman graduate of McGill College.

She was in her late teens, early 20s, and I'm being very serious, a leading anti-fascist activist. So imagine this young woman who's very much cosmopolitan in all the ways we think about cosmopolitanism, understanding the ways of the world, understanding the troubles of militarism, understanding the ways of the world, understanding the troubles of militarism, understanding the troubles of fascism,

understanding the troubles of European imperialism. And she is relocating from her home base in Montreal City, very rooted in her community there, fully conversant in English and French. She arrives in New York City in the 1930s. She's working to make ends meet, but she reinvents herself as a writer at the same time that she is critiquing the world powers.

And I use Dr. Deshield, our late elder and ancestor Dr. Deshield, to illustrate the ways that ordinary black women and men are thinking about some of the most seismic, disruptive forces of the day. Well before we would see sort of Nazi Germany and its allies try to take over Europe and the world. But that you know black people, black women are critiquing these ideas and this piece of particular ethic because she was inculcated in a Garveyite household, a household that believed in Pan-Africanism.

Believed. Marcus Garvey? Marcus Mosiah Garvey, indeed. And that Africans and black people should work together, not withstanding borders. And Dr. Deshield is very much a product of that world. And also, too, from the other people that you write about in the book, she kind of had that sensitivity to injustice

as you write about somebody else, Rosie, Roosevelt Douglas, and the audacious way that he actually ended up in Canada by just calling up the prime minister. Literally. Can you tell us his story? Indeed. So Roosevelt Douglas was born on the island of Dominique in the Eastern Caribbean.

He had applied to attend undergraduate studies in Canada in the early 1960s. And Douglas, like some Caribbean students, African-Caribbean students at the time, was unsuccessful in obtaining a visa to enter Canada. And so he being very audacious and literally not thinking that he was bound by anything or anyone, picked up the phone and asked the international operator for Prime Minister Dieffenbaker's office. Dieffenbaker's secretary answered the phone

and passed the message to Dieffenbaker. But he called back. And Dieffenbaker called back and made sure that this young student was able to get his visa and enter Canada. And him and Dieffenbaker established a lifelong friendship until Douglass's activism became a little discomforting for Diefenbaker because Diefenbaker was a progressive conservative.

Yeah, which is interesting because I think it leads us into the next conversation, which is this paradox, because Diefenbaker understood that injustice as you wrote of. Yes. But then when it was, I guess, when it started feeling a little bit too uncomfortable, that relationship changed. I want to read another passage from the book that goes into that a little bit. You write, the Canadian public had an insatiable appetite

for sensational news of US racism. It fueled the paradox of progress, which made Canadians feel exonerated of their record on racism. Race, in fact, influenced the identity that Canadians wanted to project to a post-war world. Race also shaped Canadians' perceptions of the United States as society that they believed lacked the virtues of British civility concerning the treatment of black people. This was so fascinating because I think when

Canadians were looking to the state, maybe kind of similar to what's happening right now in present news, saying that Canadians are much better than Americans. So can you elaborate on this paradox of progress in Canada? Indeed. And so I would say one of the main factors that helped me distill this idea of a paradox of progress was certainly having grown up in Canada, but also living in the United States for seven years over the course of my doctoral training

and being in sort of the heartland of the empire, and understanding US society not from without, but from within, and understanding the ways that Canadians, and Canadian society, and Canadian institutions are able to accrue moral authority vis-a-vis the United States, how the United States is, in some ways, hamstrung because of its own shortcomings at home and overseas.

So it allowed me to sort of structure this notion of a paradox of progress that if you look at two entities that are maybe two vehicles, that are in neutral on a flat surface, but in car A, the motorist is gently tapping on the accelerator, meaning the vehicle is going to be moving backwards slowly, gently tapping.

And in car B, the motorist sits there, but does not tap on the accelerator. Within a matter of seconds, minutes, and even an hour or so, invariably, you'll see a major chasm between car A and B, even though they start off roughly at the same place, as settler colonial societies. But we will see the United States as being so much more regressive and Canada

as being so much more progressive. And this is the paradox of progress, that Canada really, truly never had to do much. Because Canada has this, through the blessing or the curse of geography, Canada is affixed at the hip to the United States. The United States, as we know, with its gory images of lynchings and just unredemptive violence, especially where black peoples are concerned,

sometimes indigenous peoples and other groups, the US and as an empire looks that much more foreboding. Whereas Canada appears more civil. Canada appears tamer. Canada appears circumspect and sometimes even more introspective. And so the paradox of progress is that by virtue of our proximity to a really problematic society, Canada simply looks better.

And that in so many ways obfuscates the forms of anti-black racism in Canada, anti-Asian racism, anti-Jewish racism, and absolutely anti-Indigenous racism. All these forces are very much present in Canada, but the spectacle of violence and dispossession and hate are so much more profound than the United States, and so therefore we think that Canada is just inherently virtuous. You have an example of a gentleman by the name of Jimmy Wilson, and I won't spoil it for people to read the book,

but I think that really demonstrates this paradox of progress. You've mentioned, you know, we've talked a little bit about how Canadians, we seem to have like a rosy picture of our history especially when we do compare it to the United States but there's a lot that the book goes into that kind of says that's actually not accurate or factual. So can you tell us a little bit about what happened at Sir George William University in Montreal? Sure. So Concordia University, which was formally known as Sir George Williams

University, in the 1960s, my friend and colleague David Austin has written about this in a very thorough way. But in the 1960s, Montreal in so many ways was like the melting ground of sorts of various activists and radical thinkers and intellectuals. And many black people from the Caribbean, homegrown black people from Canada, black people from the United States as well as the African continent,

attended university in Montreal, organized in Montreal. And because of this coming together of all these forces, including forms of Quebecois nationalism as well, homegrown nationalism as well, Montreal became a radical site of activism. And so at Sir George Williams University, given the influx of black students in the city, which was very frightening to a lot of residents of the city

and sort of the ruling class, some black students, six of whom, in fact, had identified that their biology professor, they alleged that he had marked them in a racist manner, was consistently giving them bad grades. And so this issue of students protesting unfair treatment generated sort of a broader movement of sorts, because there was so much anti-black racism

in the society, in the city, in the province, in the country at large, in this decolonizing moment that it triggered a student protest and an occupation in January 1969, which was infiltrated by members of law enforcement, especially the RCMP federal police. And this infiltration of this student peaceful law-abiding protest turned into a riot of sorts, sort of a violent protest. But it was because agent

provocateurs or agent provocateurs had instigated a conflict among the students and somebody, an unknown assailant, had set a fire which triggered this massive Tours had instigated a conflict among the students. And somebody, an unknown assailant, had set a fire, which triggered this massive disruption. And so this incident in 1969 would really destabilize Canadian society in terms of how members of the ruling class, politicians, business elites, the security apparatus perceived that black people and black people's presence

pose an existential threat to the Dominion, to Canada. Is that when Rosie's and Diefenbaker's relationship changed, or is that? Yes. That was, in fact, sort of the watershed moment where Diefenbaker had, in so many ways, and I think this is a proper verb, had been grooming Roosevelt Douglas

to become the first black MP in the country. And he would have ran in writing in Nova Scotia and Halifax. And Roosevelt Douglas had all the skills and the charm and charisma to pursue that objective and to carry the flag of the progressive conservatives. And he was like a card carrying member. But at this particular moment, Douglas understood that his elder, his mentor, his political patron

didn't fully understand the issues that black people experienced in this country. And I must say for the record, as a historian who believes in the power of nuance and balance, Deaton Baker, although he still doesn't receive his due, is probably one of, literally probably one of the most effective and greatest prime ministers in this country in terms of understanding what he did to improve the rights of black people, to defend the interest of Japanese

Canadians and certainly of indigenous peoples. But he doesn't get that sort of credit because he is seen as being conservative. He pushed back on a lot of those policies. Indeed. We have about five minutes left. But some of the book read like scenes from Jason Bourne. Because I was like, what? That's incredible.

You have stories about the CIA. You also had some shocking details in the book about the RCMP collaborating on counter insurgency with the FBI. Can you tell us more about this cross-border intelligence system? Why was this happening? Indeed. So coming out of the 1950s and the 1960s with the civil rights movement or the freedom struggle

in the United States and the ways that there was cross-pollination between that and what was happening in Canada, but also with connections in the Caribbean and the African continent as a time when African peoples are resisting the forces of imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, militarism, you name it. And so in around 1956, the FBI, the federal police of the United States, and not just the FBI,

but sort of the broader national security apparatus in the US, created this initiative called the Counterintelligence Program. But its main objective, I mean, it had multiple objectives. I mean, it went after like, you know, women's groups, radical women's groups, and various leftists, white groups, indigenous peoples, black people, etc., communists. But its main objective was to neutralize. And when I say neutralize, I mean basically to decapitate militant black movement in the United States,

what they call black nationalism. So think of an archetype like Fred Hampton, who was assassinated by the FBI and Chicago police, or Malcolm X, et cetera. The objective of COINTELPRO was to disrupt black organizing in the United States and also disrupt connections elsewhere overseas. And so given Canada's national security apparatus, his own anxieties about black people, black people who were not taking up arms against the Canadian government or Canadian institutions, black people were simply marching, protesting, resisting that we don't want to live in a racist society.

We want the rights afforded to all Canadians. This created a great deal of anxiety, a great deal of paranoia that was unbeknownst to even the prime minister who was Pierre El Elietutu at the time, the minister of the solicitor general who oversaw the RCMP. He didn't know at the time, but the brass within the security service coordinated with the FBI, with their counterparts, through the Department of External Relations and Department of State, to bring an African-American FBI operative to Canada,

because they couldn't find a black person to betray the community here, to infiltrate black community spaces, to provide and then specifically to inculcate black boys who were of teenage years, inculcate them with, well, criminality and a penchant for gang violence, as opposed to them engaging in constructive forms of community organizing and civil rights protests and human rights protests. And so the objective for the FBI,

the objective for the RCMP at that time, was to sow as much doubt and distrust in the minds of ordinary Canadians, meaning white Canadians, that black people are violent, that black people, when they say they want civil rights and human rights, they actually want to take up arms against the Canadian state, and that black people will work with the indigenous nations

to pursue this objective. And that was all patently false. This was part of the counterintelligence. And literally, that is what counterintelligence is. And it was part, as I argue in the book, a process of counterinsurgency, a form of low-level warfare against black communities. And it happened right here in this city.

It happened in Montreal. It happened in Halifax. It happened in various indigenous nations across the country. And one of the last objectives was to sow as much distrust between indigenous nations and black communities, because there was a coming together of sorts.

And indigenous nations drew a lot of inspiration from black power. In fact, they named their protest movement in the 60s red power to pay homage. And so indeed, the connections with the CIA, with the FBI, with international gun running, all types of things that we would never guess about Canadian history, and the connections to US history, Caribbean history,

African history. I mean, reading the book, my jaw was on the ground, because that was obviously very effective, because I think a lot of that distrust still exists today. As Canadians, why is there so much that we don't know about our own history? We have about a minute left. Sure.

Part of the reason is because it's taken a while for non- or Canadians of very diverse backgrounds to penetrate the historical profession, which is like a guild in and of itself. And so the reason why I ended up becoming a historian, partly because I have a father with a seventh grade education but a masterful storyteller. And I had a black professor as an undergraduate

at the University of Toronto, Dr. Taylor, whom I mentioned, who taught me the power of history and history and sort of the professional writing of history. And there were many roadblocks that would have prevented me from being able to become a historian to write a history like this that would give our society and our country different sensibilities in terms of who we are

and from whence we came and where we might be able to go in terms of understanding and reconciling our sort of difficult past. So I think the more diverse the profession becomes, the more history we'll invariably get from really fascinating vantage points of the Canadian experience. Because even in the book, you're right that at one point,

Jewish people were the only ones that would rent to black people. That's correct. This book is incredible. You're an incredible, gifted storyteller and historian. And I just want to give you like five seconds to say thank you to your parents, because I know that it's very important for you.

Thank you so much. So many thanks to my father, Soa, my mother, Nan Krabiatt, to my beloved kinsmen, kinswomen on the African continent, to my peoples at Atrey Kowai and all freedom loving, justice seeking peoples everywhere. Thank you. Thank you so much. This has been an incredible conversation.

Thank you so much, Madeline. Congratulations on everything. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.