Civil rights activist Brenda Dickinson-Dash's uncompromising conviction helped build a social and political Black consciousness in Canada and the Black diaspora,Handout
Civil rights activist Brenda Dash was a leader of the 1969 occupation of Sir George Williams University, a historic student protest sparked by the university’s failure to adequately address anti-Black racism on campus. Ms. Dash, who acted as a spokesperson for the students, was arrested and held for weeks, refusing bail on principle.
A Black Canadian with a significant following during the protest, she went on to play a prominent role in the racial politics of 1960s and 70s Montreal, a turbulent era when the Black Panthers were ascendant in the United States and when Black Canadians were coming to grips with the experience of racism in this country. Ms. Dash’s commitment and uncompromising conviction helped build a social and political Black consciousness in Canada and the Black diaspora, though her public profile diminished over the years and her life story is not widely known.
Ms. Dash died at the age of 78 at Nathan Adelson Hospice in Las Vegas, Nev., on Nov. 29, after a long battle with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Brenda Cheryl Dickinson-Dash was born on Aug. 13, 1945, and raised in Montreal’s Little Burgundy neighbourhood, a predominantly Black community, by parents who had immigrated from Trinidad and Tobago. Her father, Marcus Dash, worked as a porter with Canadian Pacific Railway and helped organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in Canada; her mother, Maisie Dickinson-Dash, was active in the city’s Coloured Women’s Club. Brenda attended secondary school in Montreal and later, Sir George Williams University and McGill University.
In an interview for a special issue of the journal Topia about the 50th anniversary of the Sir George Williams University student protest, Ms. Dash recalled that her parents helped shape the development of her Black consciousness around social justice: “My parents’ activism did influence my view of the world. My father was very persistent in telling me and my … siblings that we had to apply ourselves to our education because we were Black and that would be held against us. So, in order to compete in the world, we had to be better than the others.”
Her father’s words proved to be prophetic when several Black and Caribbean students at Montreal’s Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) reported in 1968 that their biology instructor had been discriminating against them. The university mishandled its response to the complaints, and Ms. Dash was among a group who occupied the university’s ninth-floor computer centre and seventh-floor faculty lounge for two weeks in protest.
“We believed that we were participating [like so many others around the world at that time] in a good and just cause, because our participation would ultimately change the world against discrimination and racism,” Ms. Dash said in the interview.
Ms. Dash was there on the fateful morning of Feb. 11, when the university administration called in the police even though the students believed an agreement had been reached to re-examine the racism allegations. A mysterious fire began in the computer centre that students were occupying, leading them to use an emergency axe to escape. Police officers who were waiting on the other side arrested 97 of them, including Ms. Dash. The computer centre was destroyed, causing $2-million in damage.
The deceptive tactics used, arrests and negative portrayals of the protesters in the Canadian media all contributed to galvanizing the protesters into a strong and cohesive group of young people prepared to fight, Ms. Dash said.
She spent weeks in prison and refused to take bail when it was eventually offered to her. She famously told her older brother, Mervyn, who had arrived to bail her out: “I won’t take bail until we all get it.” She was convinced that separating the students would divert them from their cause, so when her brother asked if she was crazy, she said, “Call me crazy, but I’ll stay.”
Police arrest Brenda Dickinson-Dash at Sir George Williams University in 1969. Following the Sir. George Williams occupation, Ms. Dickinson-Dash and others founded Uhuru, a Black community newspaper, based in Montreal, that circulated in Canada and the United States.Office of the Vice-Rector, Administration and Finance, Concordia University
Many of the students were eventually advised to plead guilty and accept plea deals. Ms. Dash, however, refused to do so, along with Roosevelt (Rosie) Douglas (who was eventually deported to his native Dominica and went on to serve as that country’s prime minister), and Anne Cools (who later became a Canadian senator). As a result, the three became visible and vocal figures associated with the protest.
Looking back, Ms. Dash said: “Either the three of us should have been found guilty, or not guilty. You can’t have one of us guilty, one of us sort of guilty, one of us not guilty. Despite this, Rosie [Douglas] was given a little less than a two-year sentence, Anne received a six-month sentence, and I was fined. That is what happened – Canadian justice!”
Ms. Dash said this resistance helped define the movement. The students, even when held in jail awaiting bail, were feared by prison guards for their revolutionary posture. The spirit of the civil rights era was conspicuously present.
The Sir George Williams occupation was part of the broader Black Power movement, the full effects of which are underdocumented in Canada.
“We, the students and the Sir George affair, had by then become a hot topic in North America. There were always a lot of reporters coming around or calling to speak to us,” Ms. Dash said.
Her interaction with the judicial system was an eye-opener, she said, that inspired her lifelong commitment to social justice.
She and other Sir George Williams student activists went on speaking tours, determined to correct media misrepresentations that dubbed the protest “a radical riot.” They went to Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax, where they met with the Black activist Burnley (Rocky) Jones, and to the United States, where they met with Black Power organizers such as Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), and the Reverend Jesse Jackson. They took part in marches, spoke out about the unfair treatment of Black students in Canada, and made common alliances. Ms. Dash was a firebrand public speaker who caught the attention of police and intelligence services.
Like many others who had participated in the 1969 protest, Ms. -Dash was heavily affected by her involvement in the event. Historian David Austin suggests that the Canadian state security apparatus took a special interest in monitoring Ms. Dash as a “Black Power radical.”
In the 1970s, she was frequently, in her words, “rounded up,” and jailed for participating in Black Power events or during security scares, including those caused by Front de libération du Québec.
“We would meet every week at the Universal Negro Improvement Association’s headquarters, where we would discuss ideas, our strategies, and activities,” Ms. Dash recalled. “We became part of a movement which was referred to as the Black Power movement. This movement was gaining momentum and becoming very strong, because there [was] lots of different and intense organizing taking place.”
The activism of Black students in Montreal also sparked protests in key Caribbean cities against Canadian imperialism. And following the 1969 Sir George Williams occupation, Ms. Dash, Yvonne Greer, and others started Uhuru, an important Black community newspaper, based in Montreal, that circulated in Canada and the United States (through the diaspora), providing an important alternative source of news. The work of Ms. Dash, and others, had far and wide-reaching impact.
When she left Canada in the mid-1970s in search of possibilities she felt she could not access in her home country, she initially had difficulty obtaining a green card to work in the U.S. because she had a misdemeanour on her record related to her involvement with the protest. (She eventually received a pardon.)
In her professional life, Ms. Dash left her mark in the music industry. After resettling in the United States, she embarked on a trailblazing career managing award-winning artists such as singer/songwriters Brenda Russell and Regina Belle, and the acclaimed hip-hop group Digable Planets, among others.
Ms. Dash was predeceased by her parents and brother Mervyn. She leaves her sisters, Beryl and Veronica; and her brother, Randolph. Ms. Dash was married twice, first to musician Eric Mercury and later to Kenneth Collins. Both marriages ended in divorce. She never had children.
In 2019, Ms. Dash returned to Montreal to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Sir George Williams protest for a two-week commemorative program of activities organized by a research collective including Concordia faculty and staff, activists and Black community members. She offered the following reflection: “All we started out to do was get six students fair grades from one professor. We had no idea that it would mushroom into this gigantic thing that changed all our lives forever.”
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