Few people know that Montreal was once, at least briefly, the epicentre of Black Power and other movements of the anti-racist and anti-colonialist left. Yet in October 1968, the Congress of Black Writers brought together at McGill University intellectuals and activists from elsewhere in Canada, the United States, the Caribbean and the African continent. CLR James, Stokely Carmichael, Miriam Makeba, Rocky Jones and Walter Rodney, to name just a few of the best known, thus inspired many Quebec activists. A few months later, moreover, a powerful occupation movement led by black students took over Sir George Williams University.

In the explosive atmosphere of the time, it did not take much for the media and the country's security services to see Montreal as a hotbed of black protest whose anti-colonialist discourse also had the potential to ignite the movement for the national emancipation of the Quebec people.

Meticulously researched, Black Negroes, White Negroes challenges traditional views of the history of black internationalism and offers a thorough analysis of the political issues of the time surrounding questions of power, gender, and race.

Canada – like the rest of the world – has still not freed itself from racism. This book sheds light on new paths to real emancipation with the light of the past.