Essay by McGill History Professor Dr. Melissa N. Shaw published on Black Perspectives in 2022. Excellent overview of McGill's early connections to slavery in Canada.
A look at McGill’s history (and necessarily Montreal’s history) within the larger currents of Black history by McGill History Professor Dr. Suzanne Morton. An excellent place to begin historical research on Black McGill faculty, students, and staff, or to consider how the past has influenced the present.
In order to support a wider range of enquiries into McGill University’s institutional history, archivists based in ROAAr have begun to develop a series of research guides aimed at simplifying access to primary source material relevant to the University's early history and establishment, including holdings related directly to James McGill and early donors. Additional guides will be added over time. Researchers are encouraged to contact the library for additional support in locating primary source material.
The presence and experiences of Black people at elite universities have been largely underrepresented and erased from institutional histories. This book engages with a collection of these experiences that span half a century and reflect differences in class, gender, and national identifications among Black scholars. By mapping Black people's experiences of studying and teaching at McGill University, this book reveals how the "whiteness" of the university both includes and exceeds the racial identities of students and professors. It highlights the specific functions of Blackness and of anti-Blackness within society in general and within the institution of higher education in particular, demonstrating how structures and practices of the university reproduce interlocking systems of oppression that uphold racial capitalism, reproduce colonial relations, and promote settler nationalism. Critically engaging the work of Black learners, academics, organizers, and activists within this dynamic political context, this book underscores the importance of Black Studies across North America.
In Done with Slavery, a study of black Montrealers in the eighty years between the British Conquest and the union of Lower and Upper Canada, Frank Mackey grapples with this question of what slavery looked like in Montreal.
The Action Plan to Address Anti-Black Racism, prepared in 2020, seeks to initiate a process of acknowledgment of our University’s historic connections to the transatlantic slave trade and its enduring legacies.
The McGill Library and the McGill School of Information Studies (SIS) are teaming up to provide a fellowship program for Black students to complete the two-year Master of Information Studies (MISt) at McGill. The MISt is the advanced degree required for most professional librarian positions.
Black Racialization and Resistance at an Elite University by 
Done with Slavery: The Black Fact in Montreal, 1760-1840 by 
