Half a century after the 1969 student riot that exposed institutional racism at Concordia University, the institution has apologized to black people who were arrested, imprisoned, brutalized or marginalized in the aftermath of these violent events.
The English-speaking Montreal university has been carrying out a vast exercise for two years aimed at turning the page on what it considers to be the “systemic racism” which continues to rage on campus and elsewhere in the country – including in Quebec.
In a 108-page report unveiled on Friday, the establishment makes a series of commitments to repair its relations with the black community. The University is committed to increasing the number of black people among the student population and all categories of staff. It is also preparing to “renaming its main facilities taking into account its historical relations with black and indigenous communities”.
Concordia University rector Graham Carr apologized to the black community at a ceremony on Friday afternoon. He spoke bluntly about this dark — and little-known — page in Montreal history: 97 students had been brutally arrested when their denunciations of institutional racism at Sir George Williams University (the ancestor of Concordia, born in 1974 from the merger of this English-speaking university and Loyola College), rejected by the establishment, had turned into a riot in the winter of 1969.
“Unfortunately, the actions taken by the University, as much as its inaction, unequivocally testified to the existence of institutional racism. This behavior has had broad negative consequences in black communities not only in Montreal, but also elsewhere in the world — particularly in the Caribbean, where many of the students involved in the protest at Sir George Williams University came from,” said said the rector.
“We recognize the serious and often disastrous consequences of the actions taken by the University at the time and their lingering repercussions over the years. Furthermore, we deeply regret our silence over the decades following the protest. This silence contributed to the weakening of trust as well as the severing of ties between Concordia University and black communities. It shouldn’t have taken more than 50 years to recognize the mistakes that were made at that time,” he added.
The Concordia Racism Task Force was formed in the wake of the violent death of George Floyd, a black American killed by police in May 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Police violence against black people in the United States has sparked outrage around the world, including in Montreal. “Systemic racism” has returned to the forefront in Quebec, also due to the mistreatment of Aboriginal people.
Discrimination and Violence
This painful episode began in May 1968. Six black students at Sir George Williams University had filed a discrimination complaint against an assistant professor of biology, Perry Anderson. Despite evidence that he treated black students differently, including giving them consistently lower grades than their white peers, the university dismissed accusations of racism.
Rodney John, from St. Vincent in the Caribbean, was in Professor Anderson’s class in 1968. The 13 black students in the group all experienced discrimination from the teacher, he says. “He clearly considered us inferior to white students,” said the retiree during a ceremony at Concordia on Friday.
A white student who had copied word for word the work of a black colleague thus obtained 9 out of 10 – two points more than his black classmate.
Department leadership absolved Professor Anderson of any blame, but the report was never made public. “I was told it got lost in the internal mail,” Rodney John recalled.
About 400 students protested by occupying the school’s computer lab on January 29, 1969. The protest remained peaceful until February 11, when the school asked the police to end the occupation. The students ransacked the lab and threw objects through the windows. A fire broke out.
The police arrested 97 students, “sometimes violently”, recognizes Concordia University. “These arrests as well as the neutralization of the demonstration had serious and lasting consequences on the lives of many people. Jail sentences, expulsions, psychological trauma, physical injuries, loss of employment, social alienation and the interruption – even the abandonment – of university studies,” said the rector of Concordia.
“Like criminals”
Montrealer Lynne Murray was among 38 black students (out of a total of 97) arrested that day. She was detained for several weeks for having denounced racism which was very real, according to her. “We were labeled as criminals. It is a stain that remains forever tattooed on our lives, ”she said on Friday.
Protesters struggled to travel, find work and find accommodation. Most of them have, despite everything, obtained their diploma (at another university for Lynne Murray) and have become lawyers, accountants, social workers, judges…
Two of the students arrested have become illustrious figures: Roosevelt “Rosie” Douglas, sentenced to two years in prison, served as Prime Minister of Dominica, his country of origin, and Anne Cools, a native of Barbados, sentenced to four months’ imprisonment, was appointed senator in Ottawa. But other student victims of repression are still living with the aftermath of the racist events of 1969, according to the report released on Friday.
Angelique Willkie, chair of the task force and special adviser on black integration at Concordia, said she hopes the rector’s apology will lead to a new era “so that these events cannot happen again”.
“I have an 18-year-old son and I want to be able to tell him, ‘Concordia is a place where your voice counts,'” she told the To have to.
We got labeled as criminals. It’s a stain that remains forever tattooed on our lives Lynne Murray”