This paper analyzes the events and circumstances that influenced and contributed to the expulsion of fifteen Black students from the Queen’s University Faculty of Medicine in 1918. It investigates the role of Black students at Queen’s University prior to the First World War, the social and political climate that led up to the expulsion, and the event itself. In examining the internal communications and minutes of the Queen’s University Senate and Faculty of Medicine, the contemporary periodical coverage of the event, and the private correspondence and writing of various authors discussing the expulsion, it becomes apparent that the university administration attempted to blame the expulsion on the racism of the WWI veteran patients returning from the front who refused treatment by Black medical students. Though James Cameron Connell, the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, presented the fifteen Black students as hard-working and capable, no effort was made on the part of the administration to take a stance against the racism of the veteran patients. These actions were in keeping with the prejudice of the period. As will be discussed throughout this paper, Queen’s University has remained an institution fraught with issues over race, religion, and gender. Prejudice persists on our campus, albeit in more subtle and less official forms.
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