Blacks have always been a part of the Québec experience-from the original European explorations to enslavement, from Confederation to the present day. Dorothy Williams returns to the roots of black history by chronicling slavery in Montreal, which lasted officially in New France for seventy-one years. The author describes the impact of the railways on Montreal's black community and charts the evolution of the black community's institutions.

Dr. Dorothy Williams is an historian and consultant specializing in Black Canadian history. Her books include Blacks in Montreal, 1638-1986: An Urban Demography, written at the behest of the Quebec Human Rights Commission in 1989 during their study of racism in Montreal's housing market, and The Road to Now: A History of Blacks in Montreal (1997), the only chronological study of Blacks on the island of Montreal to this day. It was published in French as Les Noirs à Montreal, essai de demographic urbaine. She lives in Montreal.

Dorothy Williams' profile page

"Williams' readable analysis provides a solid portrait of Montreal's black community... [It] could serve as a comparative study to the black experience in other major Canadian cities... an excellent piece of local historical research." --Canadian Social Studies

"[A] well-researched account... In the preface to her book, Dorothy W. Williams offers the reader her 'effort to describe the many facets of black presence in Montreal.' She has achieved her aim admirably well." --Montreal Serai