Conferencing as a Site for the Mobilization of Black Feminist Identities in the Congress of Black Women of Canada, 1973-1983

Abstract

The Congress of Black Women of Canada (CBWC) is a social movement organization that has represented the interests of Black women in this country for more than four decades at the national and local levels. While Black Canadian feminist scholars have started to explore women’s organizations, the CBWC’s organizing efforts is missing from the feminist record. This article seeks to redress this gap by using a Black feminist synthetic perspective to document the CBWC’s conference themes and issues between 1973 and 1983. Focusing on the organization’s conferences, this article uses organizational documents to analyze their workshop topics concerning youth and education, triple oppression, women’s movement, pay equity, immigration, racial profiling, institutionalized racism, health, multiculturalism, and sexuality. Given the CBWC’s focus on Black women and their families, understanding how members used their identities, ideologies, and institutions as critical categories to interpret their experiences is a particular concern. This article argues that these conferences were more than an empirical space for Black women’s gatherings. The conferences served as a time for the recovery, affirmation, and mobilization of Black feminist identities, that is, a time for connecting consciousness.