Text of Rosemary Brown’s Speech to Founding Convention of the National Congress of Black Women in Canada

Rosemary Brown with Helen O'Shaughnessy (right) at Women's Day celebration. Date on photo: Mar 8, 1976.  KEN OAKES / VANCOUVER SUN

In her keynote speech to the National Congress of Black Women in Canada, convened by the Canadian Negro Women’s Association on Saturday, April 7, 1973, Rosemary Brown shares her experiences as a black woman in the struggle for equality.

Speech by Rosemary Brown, MLA representing Vancouver-Burrard in the British Columbia legislature, on the occasion of the National Congress of Black Women in Canada: convened by the Canadian Negro Women’s Association, Inc., on Saturday, April 7, 1973.

Madame Chairman, Your Honour, fellow servant of the people, friends ... this is a very exciting experience for me to be here with you tonight and I would like to say first of all… thank you to the Canadian Negro Women’s Association for making this possible. My only sadness is, as Mrs. Carrie Best expressed so poignantly at the Black Awards dinner a couple of weeks ago, that many of the women and men who struggled and made the sacrifices in the early days are not alive to share this historic moment with us. I am sure that they must have thought, even as I did 25 years ago when I arrived in this country, that an occasion such as this was at least a hundred years away. And I know that the reason why it didn’t take a hundred years was because of the unselfish efforts of those pioneers and the unselfish efforts of many of you here tonight. 

Because we are Black and because we are female, this conference has given us the opportunity to explore the two liberation struggles which we are setting astride at this moment - and so I would like to share with you some of my thoughts and some of my experiences in these struggles...