Thread by @CarlaJeanStokes

Today marks the beginning of #BlackHistoryMonth - here's a quick little thread on my very preliminary findings re: photographs of black Canadians in Canada's official First World War photographs 👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿

(Photograph is: Three black soldiers in a German dug-out captured during the advance East of Arras, October 1918, William Rider-Rider).

Obviously, soldiers of all combatant nations were fired up to fight for their countries beginning in 1914 because they felt a deep sense of patriotism. This was not divided along racial lines (race isn't a real thing, duh).

So here's the thing, all of the numbers I'm about to present in this #thread are super preliminary and are based on a really quick search. These are just some initial findings since I became interested in the topic of minority representations in Canadian official #warphotos.

Along with the photograph I posted at the top of this thread, there is just one other in the Canadian collection of official war photographs that shows black soldiers. (official=government commissioned photographs).

(Photograph is: Washing Day, Ivor Castle, September 1916, LAC MIKAN 3396685).

So, of an estimated 1250-2000 black soldiers (I've seen both numbers, will use 2000 for today's thread), there are 2 photographs in the collection, out of ca. 4500 images.

It's important to note: official photographers (Knobel, Castle, Rider-Rider) were NOT given specific assignments of what to photograph or what not to photograph (other than the obvious: don't photograph mangled/gruesome dead Canadians).

I searched the database pretty thoroughly looking for images of black soldiers. I tried all sorts of terrible words, and could only find these two. SO, while black soldiers made up about 0.32% of the CEF, they make up 0.04% of the photographs.

I'm sure there's a whole lot more to unpack here, but we can say that although there were a comparatively small number of black soldiers, they were under-represented in the official photographs.