Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal

During the 1960s, a period of global upheaval and heightened Canadian and Quebec nationalism, Montreal became a central site of Black and Caribbean radical politics. Fear of a Black Nation paints a history of Montreal and the Black activists who lived, sojourned in, or visited the city and agitated for change. Drawing on Saidiya Hartman's conception of slavery's afterlife and what David Austin describes as biosexuality-a deeply embedded fear of Black self-organization and interracial solidarity-Fear of a Black Nation argues that the policing and surveillance of Black lives today is tied to the racial, including sexual, codes and practices and the discipline and punishment associated with slavery. In reflecting on Black self-organization and historic events such as the Congress of Black Writers and the Sir George Williams Protest, the book ultimately poses the question: what can past freedom struggles teach us about the struggle for freedom today? Featuring two new interviews with the author and a new preface, this expanded second edition enriches the political and theoretical conversation on Black organising and movement building in Canada and internationally. As the Black Lives Matter and abolition movements today popularize calls to disarm and defund the police and to abolish prisons, Fear of a Black Nation provides an invaluable reflection on the policing of Black activism and a compelling political analysis of social movements and freedom struggles that is more relevant now than ever.