As an undergraduate, Cooper was active in the African and Caribbean Students' Association and the History Students' Association, as well as anti-apartheid and divestment campaigns, while completing a specialist in history and a major in African studies. Her master's research traced the history of Black education in 19th-century Ontario, and her PhD examined Canadian social history — work that pushed to establish Black Canadian history as a field in its own right.
Now a U of T professor of history and women's studies, Cooper notes that Black people have been in Canada for more than 400 years. Her project has surfaced the No. 2 Construction Battalion, the only all-Black battalion in Canadian military history, from the First World War, and Lulu Anderson, removed from an Edmonton theatre in 1922, who lost her court challenge 24 years before Viola Desmond's.
The project is also digitally mapping Black-owned businesses in Toronto from 1850 to 1900, extending into the historical record the field Cooper first pushed the university to recognize.
Reported from Rewriting the record: Afua Cooper on Black history in Canada, by Alice Lawlor (U of T Alumni News, February 11, 2026).
More from the original reporting: alumni.utoronto.ca/news/afua-cooper-black-history-canada