"Girl You Better Apply to Teachers' College": The History of Black Women Educators in Ontario, 1940s - 1980s

Girl You Better Apply to Teachers College examines the role of black women educators in Ontario from the 1940s to the 1980s. In an attempt to contribute to historical analysis on black identity, citizenship and racial difference in Canada, this dissertation investigates the ways in which black Canadian women confronted and navigated socially constructed boundaries of racial alienation, limited institutional support and inequality within Ontario school systems.

In post-World War II Canada, black womens experiences in the teaching profession served as sites of struggle and contestation in a myriad of ways. Their presence as racialized educators, though smaller in number, represented the various ways in which black women disrupted mainstream notions of education in Ontario and challenged Canadian nationhood more broadly. This dissertation project argues that black women teachers engagement with Ontarios education system was comprised of a set of difficult, messy and complex processes; beginning with access to education, their ability to get into teachers college, the constant questioning of their professional status and the material realities that shaped their choices inside Ontario schools, black women teachers worked to prove their legitimacy and dedication to the vocation.

At a time when education was used to teach young pupils how to be good moral citizens, black womens presence within these schooling institutions served to challenge the ways in which education was imparted and also revealed a system ill-equipped to deal with its changing student population. Largely using oral interviews, school board minutes, newspapers, yearbooks, and community records, Girl You Better Apply to Teachers College argues that black women educators sense of belonging in the professional sphere circumvented subtle and overt forms of racial and social exclusion in Ontario schools. In an effort to locate themselves within the Canadian national narrative, black female educators navigated concepts of citizenship and created a new kind of belonging that was parallel to and, at times, intersected with concepts of Canadian statehood.