Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal
In the 1960s, for at least a brief moment, Montreal became what seemed an unlikely centre of Black Power and the Caribbean left. In October 1968 the Congress of Black Writers at McGill University brought together well-known Black thinkers and activists from Canada, the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean—people like C.L.R. James, Stokely Carmichael, Miriam Makeba, Rocky Jones, and Walter Rodney. Within months of the Congress, a Black-led protest at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) exploded on the front pages of newspapers across the country—raising state security fears about Montreal as the new hotbed of international Black radical politics.
David Austin is an author and educator. He teaches in the Humanities, Philosophy, and Religion Department at John Abbott College and the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.
Other publications from this author include:
- DREAD POETRY AND FREEDOM: LINTON KWESI JOHNSON AND THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION (2018)
- Moving Against the System: The 1968 Congress of Black Writers and the Shaping of Global Black Consciousness (2018)
- "Narratives of power: historical mythologies in contemporary Québec and Canada" in Race & Class, 52 (1) (2010)
- You Don't Play With Revolution: The Montreal Lectures of C.L.R. James (2009)