North of the Color Line examines life in Canada for the estimated 5,000 blacks, both African Americans and West Indians, who immigrated to Canada after the end of Reconstruction in the United States. Through the experiences of black railway workers and their union, the Order of Sleeping Car Porters, Sarah-Jane Mathieu connects social, political, labor, immigration, […]
Presenting an unprecedented, integrated view of migration in North America, this interdisciplinary collection of essays illuminates the movements of people within and between Canada, the Caribbean, Mexico, and the United States over the past two centuries. Several essays discuss recent migrations from Central America as well.
This paper analyses the evolution of Jim Crow employment patterns in the Canadian railway industry from the 1880s to World War I. It presents race as a central organizing principle in employers' decision to hire black railwaymen for their sleeping and dining car departments. Canadian railway managers actively sought out African American, West Indian, and […]
Though the Great War is imagined and discussed as a European conflagration, an epic showdown between white Europeans, the simple fact remains that from the first, European battlefields mirrored the multiracial makeup of the empires doing battle. The Allies depended most heavily on their black soldiers, both as combatants and as labourers, even if it […]