Borderland Blacks: Two Cities in the Niagara Region During the Final Decades of Slavery

Held in conjunction with HIS265Y1Y: Black Canadian History, Dr. dann j. Broyld will discuss his recently published book, Borderland Blacks: Two Cities in the Niagara Region During the Final Decades of Slavery (Louisiana State University Press, 2022).  dann j. Broyld is an Associate Professor in African American History at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. His work focuses on transnational migration and identity in the American-Canadian borderlands.  Broyld’s work sits at the intersections of issues of race, gender, class, as well as borderlands and transnational studies

This book talk seeks to illuminate the possibilities and richness of Black Canadian histories. His recently published book, Borderland Blacks, considers Rochester, New York, and St. Catharines, Canada West, as the last stops on the Niagara branch of the Underground Railroad. Too often, historians have focused on the one-way flow of fugitives on the Underground Railroad from America to Canada when in fact the situation on the ground was far more fluid, involving two-way movement and social collaborations. Borderland Blacks reveals that physical separation via formalized national barriers did not sever concepts of psychological memory or restrict social ties. Broyld investigates how the times and terms of emancipation affected Blacks on each side of the border, including their use of political agency to pit the United States and British Canada against one another for the best possible outcomes.