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Political Science Civil Rights

Pearleen Oliver

Canada's Black Crusader for Civil Rights

by (author) Ronald Caplan

Publisher
Breton Books
Initial publish date
May 2021
Category
Civil Rights
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781926908816
    Publish Date
    Sep 2020
    List Price
    $16
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781926908809
    Publish Date
    May 2021
    List Price
    $16

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Description

In a winning new book, Pearleen Oliver: Canada's Black Crusader for Civil Rights brings to life a compassionate and passionate African Nova Scotian, the story of her growth and activism — a book that shows how one woman's voice changed the course of Nova Scotia's history.
Pearleen Oliver pushed open doors that blocked Black girls from nurses' training. She kicked Little Black Sambo out of public schools. She was spokesperson for Viola Desmond's appeal of her 1946 conviction for challenging racist customs. A founder of the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the Black United Front and the Black Cultural Centre, she was the first female moderator of the African United Baptist Association, and a founder of the AUBA Women's Institute.
Editor Ronald Caplan weaves Pearleen's voice from her interviews and speeches. We experience Pearleen's awareness of injustice as she grew up in segregated New Glasgow schools. A married woman, we see her outrage re-kindled by a bewildered teenager at her door who was barred from nurses' training by her skin colour. Pearleen began to speak out before civic and religious and community groups, Boards of Trade, Rotary luncheons, B'nai B'rith and Baptist services and nuclear disarmament conferences. Newspapers carried her voice?a voice of reason and determination and common sense — across the province, and then across Canada.
While raising five sons and carrying on the duties of a minister's wife, Pearleen mentored young girls and women in summer camps, church groups, continuing education, and women's groups. She was the organist in her churches, and she wrote histories of Black communities.
In this eye-opening book Pearleen Oliver tells stories of activist journalist Carrie Best who published Nova Scotia's first Black newspaper, of successful businesswoman Viola Desmond who was sidetracked by petty racism, of Black soldiers who fought Nazi racism in the Second World War and then came home to racial discrimination in Canada.
This book keeps alive a determined fighter for social justice who should not be forgotten. Pearleen Oliver demonstrated what one person, one voice, can do.

About the author

Ronald Caplan has served as interviewer and photographer for Cape Breton's Magazine for twenty-five years. He has received the Barbeau Award of the Folklore Studies Association of Canada, Nova Scotia's Cultural Life Award, the Canadian Historical Association's Award for exemplary contribution to the Oral History of Cape Breton and an honorary doctorate from Cape Breton University. His work is best known for keeping the Cape Breton story alive through oral testimony and images. Living at Wreck Cove on the Cabot Trail, Caplan is the author of several books and the publisher of Breton Books.

Ronald Caplan's profile page

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