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Legacy Project Shines Light On Six Black Activists

By Neil Armstrong
PRIDE Contributing Writer

TORONTO, Ontario — Five filmmakers have produced five short films on six Black activists, who are no longer alive, but whose work created lasting change in Toronto.

Their work will premiere at the inaugural Akua Benjamin Public Lecture at Ryerson University on February 18 that focuses on fifty years of black activism and resistance in Toronto.

Sarah Michelle Brown, Sonia Godding-Togobo, Laurie Townsend, Ngardy Conteh George and Ella Cooper have highlighted the legacies of Gwen and Lenny Johnston of the Third World Bookstore, Rosie Douglas, Charles Roach, Dudley Laws and Marlene Green.

The lecture and documentaries are part of the Akua Benjamin Legacy Project, a five-year project in the School of Social Work that is made possible by a donation from former Ryerson president, Sheldon Levy.

Veteran filmmaker, Alison Duke, executive director of the documentary project, said, Benjamin chose the activists who are all people who were her friends.

“She marched with them and she engaged in various programs of activism with them, and so they are her friends, comrades, and they are no longer here.”

Duke said this project came out of one that she was a part of approximately 12 years ago called “The Fifty Years of Black Activism Project” which involved a committee studying black activism in Toronto from the late 60s to the present.

“I think with Akua Benjamin just being awarded this very high honour at Ryerson University to do a legacy project to pay tribute to the people of the Black Canadian activist movement and honour them, and also to sort of like rebuild and reimagine the history because a lot of them are no longer here.”

Duke said when Benjamin brought her back after those 12 years to make films of six people whom she wanted to honour this year, given the deadline and scope of what needed to be done, she decided to get “five pairs of hands” to do that.

She was also inspired by African American filmmaker, Ava DuVernay, and her celebration of black women in film, so Duke decided to select five black women who make documentaries, who are new voices in the documentary industry, and whose work she has seen and they are established.

Brown is the director of the short film, “Book of Love,” about the legacy of Gwen and Lenny Johnston of the Third World Bookstore.

She said each filmmaker was sent the list of activists to choose from and articles about them which prompted further research.

“I was reading some of the articles on the Johnstons and as I was reading one of them, there was a quote by somebody who was saying that the Johnstons had a huge impact on them. As I’m reading the name of the person who was speaking, it was Althea Prince, my aunt.”

Brown was also reading the Torontoist and a quote from Lenny struck a chord in her to make a film about the couple. It read: “All through my life the schools avoided me and they ignored my history, my culture, my music – now I’m trying to educate.”

She didn’t want the film to be something that is in the past.

“I don’t want this to be just something that we’re talking about that people passed away and it’s not relevant. One thing that was so important to me was let’s make it relevant today.”

From L to R: Ngardy Conteh George, Sonia Godding Tobogo, Sarah Michelle Brown, Alison Duke, Ella Cooper and Laurie Townsend.

From L to R: Ngardy Conteh George, Sonia Godding Tobogo, Sarah Michelle Brown, Alison Duke, Ella Cooper and Laurie Townsend.

Drawing from the negative reference of black people in a geography book belonging to her grandfather, Brown, who is biracial, decided to personalize the story of the Johnstons and “really treating the work that they did with the respect and reverence that it deserves” – something that fuelled her passion for the project.

Dub poet, Clifton Joseph, and singer, Alana Bridgewater, play an important part in the 6-minute film.

Brown feels that the Johnstons were the grandparents of the community who in creating the bookstore in the late 60s not only ran a business but provided a positive role model to people who needed some positivity to counter the overt discrimination in Toronto at the time.

Godding-Togobo, director of Rosie: The Fearless Rebel,” was fascinated with, “as Akua Benjamin said, how brazen he was.”

“I read everything I could about him on the net, talked to a few people who knew him and I just tried to get a sense of who the man was personally.”

She tried to reflect the essence of who he was in the 4-minute film, noting that it was very challenging because “we’re complicated people and somebody like Rosie, I think, is even more complicated than probably most people.”

“He’s complicated, just ambitious and fearless and there are so many layers to him and what he was able to accomplish here in this country and for the Caribbean, in general.”

Lennox Farrell, a friend of Douglas, and Benjamin, who worked with him directly, helped in the storytelling.

Godding-Togobo says she felt honoured to do this because one of the reasons she became a filmmaker was because she wanted to “bring to light the stories that I wasn’t seeing.”

She says Douglas was such a magnetic, dynamic presence that she feels is needed right now where “the world is changing and the consciousness of black activism is at a height.”

“I think Rosie, what he represents is a fearlessness, he represents a strength in voice, a fearlessness in voice, a fearless to speak up against injustice no matter what. He took on the Canadian State fearlessly and I feel like that is an ultimate reflection of strength of character,” said Godding-Togobo who hopes that there is a young Douglas somewhere who needs to see it.

Townsend, director of “Charley,” said the biggest challenge was to tell a bit about Charles Roach.

“How do you condense the life of a person who was called a Renaissance Man, how do you condense the life of a man like Charles Roach into a 3-minute, 4-minute, 5-minute documentary,” asked Townsend, noting that he had a hand in everything, from being one of the co-founders of Caribana to all the high profile cases he handled in the 70s with the killings of black men, in particular, to the anti-monarchy work that he was involved in to the end of his life.

Her biggest challenge was wrapping her head around all of that and being able to pick the moments that reveal the most about his character.

Roger Rowe, a lawyer, who met Roach when he came to speak to the Black Law Students Society, is featured in the film.

Thinking of a triad for the film, Townsend wanted to find people who are doing activist work today and carrying on the legacy of Roach.

She brought onboard Anthony Morgan, a lawyer with the African Canadian Legal Clinic, and after looking at Roach’s case of the seven Caribbean mothers who were being deported unfairly in the 1970s, she found Julia Farquharson.

Farquharson, a community activist, was not one of the seven mothers but Townsend heard a radio show with her and Roach and sought to include her in the film. She had a deportation case that Roach had taken on.

Townsend’s father is a lawyer and she has always had a sense of the importance of having a spokesperson, “someone who is a true advocate, who knows the law, who understands policy, who understands the game, to a certain extent, and their importance in protecting young people.”

She had a natural inclination to choose Roach’s story and noted that even though she did not grow up with her father, there was something about a black lawyer in that time period that she knew would be very compelling.

Speaking on the importance of Roach’s story, Townsend said: “It’s a legacy project and legacies are the invisible threads that hold our communities together. Legacies are incredibly important for young people to understand where we’ve been and to have a sense of where we want to be and where we can go.”

Conteh George, director of “Dudley Speaks for Me,” said she chose to tell something that is unique and lesser known about Laws with a focus on a few things.

Educator Thando Hyman-Aman helps in telling the story of the well-known activist.

“Dudley, for me, was someone who in my formative teenage years helped me become aware of my blackness as a teenager who was kind of trying to figure out who I am living in Toronto, especially going to a predominantly white high school, questioning my identity, my race and my ethnicity, how that fits in with me discovering my history.”

Living in the Oakwood and St. Clair area, she remembered coming across a march organized by Laws and feeling that she was a part of something and getting involved a little bit in that kind of work

Cooper, director of “Revolutions in Black Education: A Tribute to Marlene Green,” said Benjamin was her start off point in her research about Green.

She was surprised to find that there was so little that had been written or told about Green, given the scope of her legacy and work from the 1960s.

Poet Dionne Brand, though not featured in the film, was a source of information about Green and her work of founding the Black Education Project as well as co-writing the first race relations report for the Toronto Board of Education.

Writing in NOW magazine in a tribute to Green after she died in 2002, Brand notes, “In the 80s and 90s she headed CUSO in the Caribbean and in east, central and southern Africa, where she supported anti-apartheid work. She is widely remembered for her courageous work during the 1983 American invasion of Grenada.”

Brand worked closely with Green. Cooper also spoke to Green’s brother, Lester, her sister and a friend, Tony Souza, to help fill in the gap.

“She really fought for black youth to have better experiences after immigrating to Canada and to hear of the work that she has done with the Black Education Project to support the development of youth – it was everything from helping youth from the Caribbean to navigate the school system that was really not giving them the opportunities they required to move forward and really be successful but also bringing parents, offering them tutors, celebrating each other, cultural awareness,” said Cooper about Green.

She noted that Green was someone who did not want to be in the spotlight but wanted to make the change and build capacity for the community to move forward and do the work they do.

Cooper hopes to spark the beginning of people understanding and wanting to know more and to honour her work, which also includes her work with the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and efforts in Grenada as well.

She feels that this project is connecting her more to who were the trailblazers that came before her and it inspires her work.

Duke says she is appreciative that the spirit of these activists lives on in this collaborative effort to tell their stories.

“The whole creative and spirit of the project is representative of who these people were and how much of their time and courage and life they gave to the community.”

She hopes that these short films will hopefully inspire longer films from the team.

“We really want to perhaps create a series of films like these “so that we can retell our stories because when it comes to Black History Month it’s mostly the American version of what Black History Month is, we don’t get to hear our stories. And although we love Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, we have our own heroes too,” said Duke.

The lecture will be held on February 18, 7pm at Ryerson University and will be followed by a two-day conference organized by the Anti-Black Racism Network.

The conference, “Anti-Black Racism: Criminalization, Community and Resistance,” will be held on February 19 and 20 at Jorgenson Hall.

The ABRN was established in July 2014 and comprises university professors, students, lawyers, social workers, activists, and community and organizational leaders whose social justice work includes anti-Black racism.

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