BACK IN February that year, Barbados had just celebrated the second anniversary of independence. At that time, too, Anne Cools, a young graduate of Barbados’ Queen’s College was a student at Sir George William University, now Concordia University in Montreal.
“The events that unfolded there will remain with me,” Cools said recently from her office in Canada’s Senate, of which she has been a member since 1984 when then prime minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau made her the first black woman to sit in an upper chamber in North America.
Forty-six-plus years later a penetrative documentary of the National Film Board of Canada, called The Ninth Floor, is being shown across Canada.
In 1969, students of different races, some from Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica and Barbados, occupied a campus building. They were demanding what Cools’ called a “process” by the university to deal with racism and a professor who had become infamous for giving black students poor marks for papers they had prepared and often shared with white students who were given top grades.
But inept handling by campus administrators to the requests resulted in the introduction of police in riot gear moving against the students as fire broke out and smoke billowed from the ninth floor of the burning building.
In the end, several students, including Cools, were arrested. Just as bad, there was the ugly scene of white Canadians urging the police and others to “let the n…..rs burn,” meaning let the black students die.
“They wanted the Blacks to die,” recalled Cools who wasn’t even on the ninth floor of the building when the fire started and the computer destroyed.
That’s where the documentary, The Ninth Floor, comes in. Using film retrieved from archives, published reports, interviews with some of the living participants, extensive research and careful editing to ensure the authenticity of the story, a team of creative film-makers led by Mina Shum, the director, came up with the feature-length show.
Cools, who had declined to plead guilty and avoid jail time, spent two months in jail for an offence but was subsequently pardoned.
“The documentary sets the record straight about what happened,” said Cools who would like to see it shown in Barbados.
She said that the documentary accurately showed Black and white students standing together demanding a “process” to deal with racism.
Tony Best is the Nation’s North America correspondent. Bestra@aol.com