Explore our Archival Records

This is where you can explore our full archival records collection which make up the core part of our exhibition. Records are taken from numerous different collections and informed the responses and discussions around them in our modern times. You can also use the filters to sort the material by category. Click into each to learn more!

Theme: Representation and Reception

The discussion of performance of any kind by Black people in Canada or North America requires an acknowledgement of how Black people were represented and written about by the dominant white culture. Learn More.

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From the Flea Market Collection, Dance Collection Danse.

Theme: Legislation and Protest

When we ask the question: Where were Black people dancing in Canada before 1970?, we are asking: Where was it legal to dance? Where was it safe to dance? Where was it fun to dance? Where were Black people free to dance as they wanted? Learn More.

This selection of clippings demonstrates the variety of ways that Black people were denied entry to: dance and concert venues even when Black artists were on stage; dance classes when dance studios were teaching social dances derived from cultural practices of the African Diaspora; and social dance venues for participating in racialized dances such as the jive or jitterbug.

Negro Young People to Picket Dance Hall.

Negro Put Out Dance Hall Says Jive Did It.

Reproductions of a selection of articles from the mainstream press including the Toronto Daily Star and the Globe and Mail , March and April 1959.

Image from Les Ballets Africains souvenir program, 1959.

Summary of Legislative Changes in Toronto and Ontario

Theme: Dance in and for Communities

The dances we used to have at the UNIA — they were fantastic! Every Thursday night, of course, at the hall there’d be a dance. Every Thursday night — that was the night that the domestics got off … The parents would act as chaperones, and they’d sit around if they didn’t dance. They came and they sat there and enjoyed themselves watching the younger people dance.

— Gwen Johnston
In No Burden To Carry: narratives of black women working in Ontario 1920-1950 (1991)

Grange Road Dances, Globe and Mail on August 9, 1956.