Professor and journalist Adrian Harewood teaches the course.
Professor and journalist Adrian Harewood teaches the course. Credit: Morgana Abdy Credit: Morgana Abdy

At Carleton, the country’s first Black Canadian journalism history seminar wrapped up with the end of the fall semester, creating a new access point for students to develop the under-researched field of study.

Although the course’s context within the school is of historical significance, the curriculum’s significance to student’s education is not well understood outside of the group who participated in the course. 

With a curriculum spanning more than 200 years of history, students learned how discussions on liberation evolved with the changing contexts, priorities and political debates of the 20th century. Students also explored how the Black newspapers of the 20th century approached reporting on resistance to discrimination, which publishers themselves had a stake in. 

Some students said the course taught by Professor Adrian Harewood made more than just the factual content of Black Canadian newspapers accessible.

Tanya Nguyen is a fourth-year media production and design student of Vietnamese heritage who is interested in colonization and Indigenous issues. 

Nguyen was “really ignorant” to oppression in this country for most of her life before starting her undergraduate education because she grew up immersed in the dream of an inclusive and diverse Canada.  She enrolled in the seminar because she wanted another opportunity to develop her awareness of historical context, she said. 

“I don’t think I fully realized the depth of the racism that went on,” she said, “Coming from parents who were refugees who were welcomed into the country I had pre-conceived notions.” 

Maeva Kalulambi is a Congolese Canadian fourth-year sociology student. This was not her first rodeo studying Black Canadian history in-depth. She took a Black Canadian history course that focused on Montreal. 

Kalulambi is finding more of herself in every course she enrolls in, including the Black Canadian journalism course, she said. 

“Being able to have a class like this, or any other class like this, it inspires you to learn what it means to be a Black person in Canada. Someone could be so inspired where they think ‘okay, I want to do something for the Black community now,’” Kalulambi said.

Although Kalulambi is not a journalism student, she recommends the course to other students and Universities. Archived newspapers can bring to life what happened in Black communities in a way that a historical essay may struggle to communicate, she added. 

Chronicling the history of Black journalism

A part of Harewood’s work at the journalism school is tracking down the records which show how Black Canadians reported on themselves throughout this country’s history. 

With many members of the 20th century’s Black press aging, the right time to record this history is now, Harewood said.

“We have an opportunity because people are still alive, so they can comment on it directly,” Harewood said “The quality of that is a bit different than working with an archive. I think there is an urgency there that we need to get to quickly. I feel that every day is a lost day.” 

There are not nearly enough texts that specifically examine the history of the Black Canadian press, which meant Harewood’s course sometimes had to rely on generalized Black Canadian history texts and U.S. sources.

The bottom line is that we need more people to write about Black Canadian journalism history, Harewood said.

Otherwise, the history of the Black Canadian press in the late 20th century could become difficult for future generations to study. There are already significant gaps in the timeline of Black Canadian journalism history, such as  records of Black newspapers from 1861 until 1923. 

Telling their own story was a necessity

Dominique Gené is a third-year journalism student of Haitian heritage who has contributed to this growing area of study by helping Harewood develop the course. She dove into the archival materials over the summer, mapping Black Canadians’ journey in Canada as told through their media. It was some of the most rewarding work Gené has ever done, she said. 

Her perspective on journalism shifted as she realized journalism was a necessity for Black Canadians, Gené said. Henry Bibb needed to provide an outlet for formerly enslaved refugees to express their concerns, but also a way to communicate back home that refugees were living safely in Canada. 

“Journalism was there [to] advocate for Black liberation and also to help others that were still in the States, and those here in Canada,” she said. “The journalism that they were doing, you could not use our standards today to define it.” 

Using the media for the express purpose of liberation would fly in the face of contemporary standards of objectivity and distance, Gené said. Yet, it was necessary because the mainstream white-owned press pushed a narrative that the fugitive community were lazy thieves, she said. 

Gené also highlighted the importance of the newspaper’s celebrations of daily Black life.

The newspapers had short community submissions, including notes that a university student was visiting home, that a person travelled to Nova Scotia, or someone tried a new recipe. 

“It was important that they could sit down and enjoy the mundanity of life, when they had the permission and luxury,” Gené said. “You can be excellent tomorrow, it is okay. Enjoy the small things.” 

Course grew out of grassroots pressure

Carleton’s journalism school officially announced it was offering the course in the summer of 2022, following a series of changes to the school’s approach to equity and diversity in response to a call-to-action letter from BIPOC alumni.  

The group of alumni published the letter a few weeks after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd in Minnesota, as many institutions were confronted with the summer of 2020’s politically charged reckoning on race. 

Some were already talking about their experiences with racism while studying, but they did not coordinate with one another across graduating years until institutions began responding to the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.

Olivia Rania Bowden is a biracial South Asian and white CTV producer. She is also one of the 21 alumni who co-wrote the call to action. She graduated from Carleton University with a master of journalism in 2017. 

Bowden said she worked on the letter in solidarity with some of her colleagues who were more burnt out or felt pressure to remain silent to protect future career opportunities. Many journalism students were taught not to rock the boat in order to get job opportunities and be respected, she said.

She hopes that the improvement to curriculum and representation in faculty at the school are just the first steps in the school’s efforts to improve education for BIPOC students. 

Harewood has personally felt supported in his efforts to develop education about racialized journalism at the school. However, there remain some fundamental problems within the journalism school – including among students – that need to be addressed, Harewood said. 

“We all need to be willing to interrogate ourselves in a very rigorous way. There is a lot of work that needs to be done,” Harewood said. “There still need to be uncomfortable conversations around race.”  

The course should be celebrated for its educational and historic value. However, one course cannot unravel racism in an institution or an industry on its own. Change at the journalism school is an ongoing and incomplete process.

Disclosure: Morgana Adby is a white fourth-year journalism student at Carleton University who completed the Black Canadian journalism history course in the fall semester. She has personal and professional relationships with all the current students and faculty in this story.

Editor’s Note: Olivia Rania Bowden did not say most journalism students believed they could not say “Black Lives Matter” publically to pursue legacy media jobs. We regret the error. Bowden has publically spoke in support of Black Lives Matter since 2014.

Morgana Abdy

Morgana is a community news reporter and fourth-year journalism student at Carleton University. She is interested in documenting social issues in local and global contexts. Updates about her work are on...