Chapter Nine

The Pursuit of Freedom: The Struggle Against Racism and Discrimination

No easy walk to freedom, no easy walk to freedom.
Keep on walking and we shall be free, That’s how were gonna make history.”

— “No Easy Walk to Freedom,” Peter, Paul, and Mary,
No Easy Walk to Freedom, 1986.

The August First observances in emerging urban centres and smaller towns were an opportunity for newly freed slaves to demonstrate their patriotism and allegiance to the British crown and their gratitude for freedom in Canada. However, they soon realized that the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act was just the beginning of the global movement for full rights and equality for people of African heritage. Without a doubt, that movement included Canada. The struggle for equal civil rights began immediately after emancipation. Although Blacks were no longer enslaved and were free in a general sense, their lives were still restricted because of their race — true freedom was far from their grasp. Once they received their citizenship, African Canadians expected the right to own property, educate their children, and exercise full civil liberties, including the right to vote and to serve on juries. But that did not happen.

African Canadians faced many social and political issues well into the twentieth century. Racial segregation was prevalent in education. Throughout the 1800s, African-Canadian children could not attend local public schools and were forced to go to legally segregated schools, except in Toronto. In post-secondary education, Black women were prohibited from enrolling in nursing programs during the 1930s and 1940s. Blacks in Canada also dealt with residential racism, a practice that denied them the right to rent or own property in certain places. They were denied the right to purchase government-owned land in some towns. Black men’s rights to vote and serve on juries were hindered because of their race.[1] Even though they could exercise these rights by law, the racist practices in some locales often prevented them from doing so.

Employment opportunities were limited for African Canadians. Most were relegated to positions as domestic servants, bellhops, general labourers, chauffeurs, sleeping car porters, railway construction workers, and farm help. Blacks were excluded from certain jobs and not considered for certain promotions. They were also refused service or offered segregated service and accommodation in public businesses, such as movie and concert theatres, golf courses, restaurants, hotels, dance halls, bars, parks, restrooms, community centres, barber shops, and swimming pools. People of African descent who wished to immigrate to Canada between the 1890s and the 1960s also faced discrimination. Blacks from the English-speaking Caribbean were not allowed into Canada, despite being from sister British Commonwealth countries.

By the 1940s, people of African ancestry had still not achieved complete equal rights in Ontario and other regions of Canada. The generally accepted view was that Blacks were not equal participants in the nation’s democracy. This fuelled a Canadian civil rights movement that saw men and women of different racial groups — Blacks, Jews, Whites, and Aboriginals — join together to fight racism. These activists would later form the labour and human rights movement.

Segregated Schooling

The last school to be legally desegregated in Ontario was in Colchester, Essex County, in 1965. In Guysborough, Nova Scotia, the last segregated school closed in 1983. Toronto was an exception, in that the doors of elementary schools and colleges were always open to Black students.

African Canadians remained proactive by forming community organizations that had a mandate to challenge the unfair treatment of Blacks and to seek redress for racism. The National Unity Association (NUA) was formed in Dresden, Ontario, in 1948 by a group of African-Canadian citizens seeking to address the mistreatment of Blacks. The UNIA had strong membership enrolment during this time period, with several branches across Ontario and many others in Canada at large. The Negro Citizenship Association of Toronto was founded in 1951 by Donald Moore and other community leaders to press the federal government to change discriminatory immigration practices.

Human rights activist and African-Canadian historian Daniel G. Hill and his wife Donna Hill, who also fought against discrimination, entered the movement for equal rights when they moved to Toronto in 1953 from Washington, D.C. As an interracial couple, they experienced racism firsthand in their new country. The Hills had a difficult time finding an apartment because landlords did not want to rent to a Black man and a White woman. Their experiences led them to join the efforts of labour and human rights organizations to pressure the Ontario government to enact province-wide anti-discrimination legislation. For years, these groups were documenting cases of racial discrimination across Ontario as proof for the need of legal intervention. In 1962 Daniel Hill became the first director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC). The OHRC is a government agency that was established to fight discrimination in its many forms and to enforce the then-newly passed anti-discrimination laws. Later, in 1978, Daniel, his wife, and some close friends founded the Ontario Black History Society (OBHS) to educate the public about Black history in Ontario and Canada. One goal of the OBHS was to combat racism against blacks through education.[2]

Employment remained a major issue for African Canadians well into the twentieth century, and they sought equal opportunities in the workplace. Having a decent paying job with some benefits was (and still is) part of an acceptable quality of life. Blacks were at the forefront of both the human rights and labour movements, because as one of the most marginalized groups in North America, racism had a big impact on their lives. Because of this racial discrimination, Emancipation Day was used as a platform to heighten public awareness of the racism faced by African Canadians. This international freedom movement incorporated issues of labour and human rights since it began in 1834. The issue of racism was common in messages imparted at commemorations.

In 1891 the Kent County Civil Rights League (KCCRL) organized the Emancipation Day observance in Chatham. Many members in attendance were descendants of fugitive slaves who had settled in Kent County. All the speakers were instructed by the master of ceremonies, James C. Richards, to talk about the racial discrimination faced by Blacks in Chatham — the reason for the formation of the organization that year. Garrison Shadd, Mary Ann Shadd’s brother, was one of the speakers on the lineup. He stated that “the policy of centuries of oppression and the policy of to-day was to keep the colored people ignorant,” referring to the hundreds of years of discrimination inflicted on people of African descent.[3]

Reverend W. Constantine Perry, pastor of Toronto’s AME church in the 1940s and 1950s, used Emancipation Day radio addresses on CKEY to highlight racism. For example, he discussed what Black women were facing in the nursing field in cities such as Toronto and Windsor:

Applications of colored girls with the needed qualifications for nurse training have been subtly rejected with unwarranted excuses and suggestions that colored applicants seek training in the U.S., he said. “The question in the mind of the unprejudiced is, why such discrimination? The Bible nowhere sanctions or approves it. The sciences of biology and anthropology emphatically disprove race and blood superiority. History records that the Negro, through his ability, can be found in every field of endeavour, in science, religion, invention, philosophy, music and other branches, with much distinction.[4]

As was the case in other regions of the country, Blacks in British Columbia faced segregation. African Canadians were not allowed to swim in city pools. Like other visible minority groups, they were subjected to discrimination in employment, housing, and public services. It should be no surprise, then, that the use of Emancipation Day to champion equal rights causes was evident in other parts of Canada. In 1961 the British Columbia Association for the Advancement of Coloured people (BCAACP) resurrected the August First commemorations in order to bring attention to the civil rights struggle. During the same decade, persistent American racism reached a peak, culminating in several riots across the country. One conflict in particular, the Detroit Riots of 1967, had an unfortunate consequence on Windsor’s “Greatest Freedom Show on Earth.” Since Detroit was Windsor’s sister city, there were safety and security concerns in both cities, and the event’s organizer, Walter Perry, was forced to cancel that year’s week-long festival, as Windsor would not issue the necessary permits.

Emancipation Day’s discussions of the challenges facing Blacks continued in the twenty-first century. In his speech delivered at Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site in 2005, Lincoln Alexander pointed out that “there’s always needs to be vigilant about racism,” noting “that’s why legislation such as the Canadian Race Relations Act is in place.”[5]

At times, African Canadians have experienced racism while observing Emancipation Day. In an incident in Seacliff Park in Leamington, Ontario, on August 4, 1930, approximately three hundred members of the three Black churches in Chatham — the Community Church (originally the Chatham BME Church Victoria Chapel), the Campbell AME Church, and the First Baptist Church — were asked by Mayor Rodell Smith and the two city councillors to leave the park. It seems as though several White picnickers left Seacliff Park and made angry calls to the mayor because of the presence of Blacks in this public place, especially during the Civic Holiday weekend. Apparently, the picnickers were upset because the church members had broken a local tradition “which prevents colored people from making a rendezvous of the town or township or holidaying at the Park, especially on a public holiday.”[6] It was agreed between the unwelcomed visitors and the representative of the town that they would leave by six o’clock in the evening. Such Jim Crow practices, although not found in writing, did exist in parts of Canada, including Essex and Chatham-Kent counties.[7] Ironically, this act of racism happened when a group of African Canadians most certainly planned their Sunday School Union picnic to coincide with the celebration of freedom to their long weekend outing.

In response to this blatant act of racism, the churches held a community meeting the following day. Reverend Charles Peyton Jones, pastor of the Campbell AME Church and organizer of the picnic, publicly expressed the group’s frustration:

We hold very strongly ... that Canada is a free country, and that in such a country no colored line should be drawn. No country is free where the colored line is drawn. As citizens of Canada our sons fought and died for it in the late World War. today, as citizens of the same country, we ask that tolerance and mutual good will toward all be the motto which will guide us towards a bigger, better, and brighter Canada.[8]

Despite the incident, Charles Peyton Jones, William H. Saunders, and W.H. Burke — pastors of the Campbell Chapel AME Church, Chatham Community Church, and First Baptist Church respectively — jointly commended Leamington’s mayor for “... allowing [them] to enjoy [their] liberties under the British flag.”[9]

Wordplay

Jim Crow Laws were laws that made the racist practices that restricted the public lives of African Americans legal. These laws limited or restricted where Blacks could and could not go and what they could and could not do because of their skin colour. This included eating in certain restaurants, swimming in public pools, and public transit seating.

In another instance of racism during Emancipation Day, Mary MCleod Bethune, one of the speakers in Windsor in 1954 was denied a room at the Prince Edward Hotel because she was Black. However, the hotel gave a room to fellow speaker Eleanor Roosevelt. Consequently, the organizers, Walter Perry and Ted Powell, had to bring both of them to Detroit for accommodations.[10]

Growing awareness of the racism Blacks were facing led to Emancipation day festivities blending with elements of social and political protest. The occasion became a platform for organizers and speakers to advance democracy, equality, and social justice for African Canadians, rallying the nation toward social change.