by Afua Cooper
On August 1, 1851, Black Canadians in Sandwich (now a suburb of Windsor), Canada West,1 and their allies commemorated Emancipation Day. Festivities included speeches, musical and cultural performances, and a dinner. The initiative was led by Henry and Mary Bibb, a Black abolitionist couple who had become leaders in the Black communities of the province, and who had founded the Voice of the Fugitive, Canada’s first Black newspaper. Here is how an article published in the Voice described the event:
The friends of freedom in Sandwich will celebrate the abolition of chattel slavery in the British West Indies, in A.D. 1837 at the Stone Barracks where there will be speaking, singing, etc.2 Several distinguished speakers from abroad are expected, among whom are Samuel R. Ward, of Boston, Mr. Johnson, of Ohio, J.J. Fisher of Toronto, George Cary, of Dawn Mills. A general Invitation is hereby extended to all persons friendly to the cause.
Dinner will be furnished by the ladies for twenty-five cents per ticket. Refreshments may be had during the day and supper in the evening. The proceeds will be appropriated towards erecting a Baptist church.
It was Mary Bibb, a publisher in her own right, who wrote the article. She also listed her name and the names of several women who were part of the women’s Emancipation Day Committee. On that day in 1851, the Bibbs were continuing the tradition of Emancipation Day celebrations and the renewal of the Black community spirit through such commemorations. It is instructive to note that the Bibbs and the rest of the community had a specific objective for the use of the funds garnered from the celebrations, and that was to concretely aid in the development of the Black community through the building of a church. That objective was realized in the founding and erecting of the First Baptist Church, which is still in operation today.
West Indian Emancipation Day, or August First as it was popularly referred to, has been celebrated by African Canadians since 1834 when the British Parliament passed the Act a year earlier to free all the enslaved Africans in the overseas slave colonies. Some slave colonies like Barbados and Antigua received complete emancipation in 1834, while others, like Jamaica and British Guiana, had to wait for a period of “apprenticeship” between 1834 to 1837–38 when they were granted full freedom. Nonetheless, the Act and the subsequent freeing of the enslaved people were momentous events because close to one million Africans who were held in bondage in the British overseas colonies, mainly in the West Indies, were freed. The Emancipation Act was a milestone in the annals of Black freedom not only in the Americas but globally as well.
Canada was part of the British Empire, and though it was not a slave society as we understand it, it was a society with slaves. Africans had been enslaved in Canada since 1628 and though the institution declined significantly by the 1820s, there were still enslaved people in the colonies who were freed by the Emancipation Act. On the other hand, in the United States slavery had grown by leaps and bounds by the time of British Emancipation. Therefore, the end of slavery in Canada made this country the only genuine free soil on the continent. The creators of August First celebrations were African Americans who had migrated to Canada during the first part of the nineteenth century in their quest for a free life.
These African Americans, runaway slaves and free persons, first began arriving in Canada after the War of 1812. They came as war refugees from the Chesapeake Region to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Later, other immigrants, mainly associated with the Underground Railroad experience, started coming primarily to the provinces of Ontario and Quebec after 1818.3 Likewise, beginning in 1858 a stream of Black immigrants from California made an exodus to British Columbia. It is these Blacks who collectively began to memorialize August First. The reason for this is threefold. First, these Canadians were grateful to the British Crown for providing them with refuge and the opportunity to build new lives in Canada. Second, these Africans were abolitionists who made it their life’s work to fight for the end of slavery in the United States, and saw the commemoration of “British freedom” as one way to signal to the slaveholding American Republic their intention. Finally, their commemoration of August First was an exercise in solidarity with Black Caribbean people in their struggle and success to win emancipation for themselves and their communities. The August First event marked the internationalization of the Black freedom struggle and the awareness of Black Canadians that “we are our brothers and sisters keeper.”
The Emancipation Act is usually seen as a manifestation of British philanthropy, and as a “handing down of freedom” to disenfranchised Blacks. But this is only a partial truth. Black enslaved Caribbean people had fought in diverse ways for their freedom. The Haitian Revolution sheds much light on this. In this instance, enslaved Africans in Haiti fought a thirteen-year war with France (and also Britain and Spain) for their freedom. The Haitians won. Their victory sent a shock wave throughout the world especially to the slaveholding empires.
It was felt by many in the political elite in Britain that it was best to avoid another Haiti in the British colonies by abolishing slavery by peaceful means. However, like the Haitians, the enslaved people in the British Caribbean had been engaged in a long struggle for their freedom. Ever since Britain became a colonizing and slave power in the Caribbean, enslaved Africans have led numerous rebellions and revolts against British slaveholding and colonial rule. Historian Michael Craton has noted that British rule in the Caribbean can be seen as a protracted 250-year war between the colonizing slaveholders and the enslaved Africans.4 In Jamaica, for example, in 1831 a slave revolt convulsed the island. In December of that year the “Baptist War” as it was called (because so many of the leaders were Baptist deacons) was started by the enslaved masses in their desire to throw off slavery and its attendant dehumanization.
The British Army and government responded ferociously. They hanged at least four hundred freedom fighters and put the country under martial law. Alarmed by the desire and intention of enslaved Blacks to free themselves, less than two years later, the British proclaimed West Indian Emancipation. The point is that enslaved Africans themselves had agency and exercised that agency in their quest to be the architects of their own lives and freedom. But in a Eurocentric interpretation of the Emancipation Act, it is the British government that has received the full credit for “giving freedom to the Blacks.” While I am not discounting the significant work done by the British Anti-slavery Movement and of such stalwarts like Granville Sharpe, I must point out that when the British passed the Emancipation Act they were well aware that the Caribbean enslaved masses had begun the struggle for their own freedom long before the British Anti-slavery Movement came into being, and that some of these enslaved people, like the Haitians, had already seized their freedom.
Likewise, the African Canadians who created Emancipation Day commemorations showed tremendous agency in originating these celebrations. They also realized, I believe, that in launching these commemorations they were sinking into the collective psyche and memory the significance of Black struggle and freedom. Emancipation Day was a vehicle used by the Black community to express their collective identity as New World Africans, a ritual in which they articulated their personhood, and further as a site in which they locate their struggle against racism. Emancipation Day celebrations began in 1834 and are still commemorated today. That is a phenomenal accomplishment. The Emancipation of Black people in Euro-American societies during the nineteenth century sits at the centre of Western discourse on freedom, human rights, and citizenship. Black Canadians have contributed greatly to this discourse and its praxis through memorials of Emancipation Day. The August First events have even given birth in 1967 in Toronto to the Caribana Festival and street parade which also takes place on August First weekend. Caribana today attracts a crowd of over one million and is the largest street festival in all of North America. It is instructive to add that Caribana brings annually upwards of five hundred million dollars to the City of Toronto.
Despite its integral place in Canadian history, the August First history has not yet been told in its fullest. That is about to change.
Educator and historian Natasha Henry has written what will become, for the foreseeable future, the definitive book on the Emancipation Day history in Canada. She cogently explores the origins and evolution of the commemoration in the older Canadian provinces (Ontario, Nova Scotia, Quebec, New Brunswick), how the celebrations were articulated throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the spread of the Emancipation Day initiatives to the rest of the country, in particular to British Columbia.
Henry reveals how the communities used the cultural arts as an integral part of Emancipation Day memorialization and sheds light on the Canadian Black community’s outreach efforts to the international Black community, their links with the White communities (mainly in Canada itself and the United States), the crucial role of the Black churches, inter-gender initiatives, and the role of women in August First events.
Henry’s research shows that the Emancipation Day celebration creators were astute, politically savvy, and committed to the advancement of Black community life. In her insightful analysis Henry also underscores the fact that while Black Canadians were grateful to the British Crown they were still mindful of the fact that Black people as a whole had not yet achieved full citizenship in either the British West Indies or Canada. Moreover, the creators of the celebrations often used the events to illuminate these issues of Black freedom and to further articulate solutions. Put another way, Emancipation Day events in Canada were a space in which culture, politics, religion, and history intersected and intertwined.
Henry has conducted in-depth research in several archives, libraries, and museums across Canada in order to write this outstanding book. She has brought to light what for us in the twenty-first century is a little-known story, but which for the years following 1834 was a major event in the Black and Canadian community. We learn, for example, that famed boxer Jack Johnson participated in Emancipation Day Celebrations in Windsor in 1909, and we also learn that music superstar Diana Ross cut her teeth in the music business at August First celebrations in Canada. Further, we discover that the Chatham Black community used the commemoration in 1895 to alert and inform both observers and participants about their struggle against segregated schooling and their fight for their children to get an education. In addition, we gain knowledge of the fact that by 1931, over twenty thousand people attended the commemoration which was dubbed “The Greatest Freedom Show on Earth,” and that the 1948 events in Windsor attracted a massive crowd of 275,000! By this date, Windsor had begun hosting the largest commemorations in North America.
Through her efforts, Henry has made a vast contribution to the history of Black Canadians, the abolitionist movement, festivals in Canada, African-Canadian traditions, Caribbean history, African-American history, and that of the African Diaspora. By filling the gaps in these narratives, Natasha has restored to all of us our shared and collective history. For this, we owe her a debt of gratitude.
Afua Cooper
Spring 2010
Afua Cooper, Ph.D., is the leading historian of the African Diaspora in Canada. She has researched widely in the field and has published groundbreaking and award winning books, including The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Slavery in Canada and the Burning of Old Montréal and We’re Rooted Here and They Can’t Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women’s History. Afua recently held the Ruth Wynn Woodward Endowed Chair in Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University. She is also the recipient of the Harry Jerome Award for Professional Excellence.