Looking for Social Dance in Toronto's Black Population at Mid-century: A Historiography

The documentation of social dance within the lives of African-Canadians at mid-century is largely undocumented. This dissertation asks the question: Where did Toronto’s black population go to social dance during the 1950s and what is learned about African-Canadians via the lens of social dance? Through archival research I interrogate both sources and methodological approaches applied to social dance and/or African-Canadian historical work. I argue against reading African-Canadian documents and histories through dominant African-American historical narratives, proposing that historical and cultural overlaps are better understood in tandem with moments of departure into African-Canadian specificity. I look to Canadian contexts pertaining to social dance, legislation, trans-cultural exchange via black sleeping car porters on the train, leisure venues and music to inform close readings of photographs, newspapers and oral histories. This work emerges at the intersection of dance studies, Black Studies, performance studies, visual culture and cultural history and historiography. It proposes ways to contextualize doubt in archival research when verification is unavailable due to the systemic exclusion of African-Canadian and other marginalized bodies from Canada’s historical record. Through case studies my research looks at: photographs as a complex tool of equal rights advocacy; text-based documents that reveal the reinforcement of racist stereotypes through language about the black dancing body and repeated reports of discrimination in searches for “negro” and “dance” in mainstream newspapers; and oral histories as both invaluable and troubling documents that at once conceal and expose otherwise undocumented information pertaining to racism, social dance and African-Canadian heterogeneity. Despite shifting municipal, provincial and federal legislation in 1950s Toronto, leisure culture remained segregated. Alternative venues where African-Canadians gathered for social dancing include the Home Service Association, Universal Negro Improvement Association and University Settlement House (USH). While each of these spaces had unique mandates in terms of communities served, social dances at all three venues were attended by both black and non-black populations during the 1950s. These social dances are reported to have played otherwise inaccessible African-American blues and rock and roll music and resulted in repeated and ongoing interracial community gathering that was not otherwise reflected within mainstream culture. Social dance is proven to be a site of revelation about race, class, gender, generation and the African-Canadian population at mid-century.

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