Home
African & Diasporic Cultural Studies
The Promised Land

The Promised Land

History and Historiography of the Black Experience in Chatham-Kent's Settlements and Beyond

Edited by Boulou Ebanda de b'Beri, Nina Reid-Maroney and Handel K. Wright

Published by: University of Toronto Press

Series: African & Diasporic Cultural Studies

Imprint: University of Toronto Press

2 figures

Digital download
9781442667457
Published: June 2014

Digital download
9781442667464
Published: June 2014

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Eschewing the often romanticized Underground Railroad narrative that portrays southern Ontario as the welcoming destination of Blacks fleeing from slavery, The Promised Land reveals the Chatham-Kent area as a crucial settlement site for an early Black presence in Canada. The contributors present the everyday lives and professional activities of individuals and families in these communities and highlight early cross-border activism to end slavery in the United States and to promote civil rights in the United States and Canada. Essays also reflect on the frequent intermingling of local Black, White, and First Nations people. Using a cultural studies framework for their collective investigations, the authors trace physical and intellectual trajectories of Blackness that have radiated from southern Ontario to other parts of Canada, the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa. The result is a collection that represents the presence and diffusion of Blackness and inventively challenges the grand narrative of history.

Part I: Introducing the Promised Land Project
1. The Politics of Knowledge: The Promised Land Project and Black Canadian History as a Model of Historical “Manufacturation”? (Boulou Ebanda de B’béri)
2. Multiculturality Before Multiculturalism: Troubling Black Identity and History Beyond the Last Stop on the Underground Railroad (Handel Kashope Wright)
3. History, Historiography and the Promised Land Project (Nina Reid-Maroney)

Part II: From Fragments through Biography to History
4. William Whipper’s Lands along the Sydenham (Marie Carter)
5. Mae Alexander: Daughter of Promise (Claudine Bonner)
6. “A Contented Mind Is a Continual Feast”: Tracing Intellectual Migrations through the Promised Land (Nina Reid-Maroney)

Part III: Transgeographical Trajectories and Identity Formation beyond the Underground Railroad
7. Resisting Imperial Governance in Canada: From Trade and Religious Kinship to Black Narrative Pedagogy in Ontario (Olivette Otele)
8. African-American Abolitionist and Kinship Connections in Nineteenth-Century Delaware, Canada West, and Liberia (Peter T. Dalleo)
9. Reimagining the Dawn Settlement (Marie Carter)

Epilogue. Reflections: The Challenges and Accomplishments of the Promised Land (Afua Cooper)

Bibliography
Index

Boulou Ebanda de b’BÉri is a professor of Communication and Cultural Studies and the founding director of the Audiovisual Media Lab for the study of Cultures and Societies at the University of Ottawa.

Nina Reid-Maroney is a professor of history at Huron University College at the University of Western Ontario and co-director of the Huron Community History Centre.

Handel K. Wright is the inaugural senior advisor to the president on anti-racism and inclusive excellence; the director of the Centre for Culture, Identity, and Education; and a professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia.

‘This book is brilliant compilation of in-depth exciting, informative, and interdisciplinary scholarship that explores the history of Chatham-Kent.’
~Karen Flynn, The Michigan Historical Review vol 41:02:2015