African American
Related: About this forumwhat came after the Underground Railroad?
African-Americans who came to Canada -- their history has not been well told in Canada, and is likely even less known in the US.
http://www.thestar.com/living/article/1129556--black-history-month-the-unknown-story-toronto-s-first-black-postman
When Albert Jackson showed up for his first day of work as a mailman, on May 17, 1882, the other letter carriers refused to show him the rounds. The reason: He was black.
... Torontos black community was galvanized into action and supported Jackson, a former child slave from the United States who had escaped to Canada along the Underground Railroad.
They were determined to see Jackson working his mail route and took their demands to John A. Macdonald, the prime minister. It was an election year, and they were heard. Wanting to please black voters, Macdonald intervened.
... Albert Calvin Jackson was born in Milford, Del., around 1856. His father was a free man but his mother, Ann Maria Jackson, was a slave, making Jackson and his eight siblings slaves as well.
When Ann Marias eldest two sons, James and Richard, were sold, she pleaded with her husband to run away and spare their other children a similar fate, writes Frost. But he grew depressed and insane over the loss of his boys and died grief-stricken.
In 1858, Ann Maria and her seven other children, the youngest of whom was Albert, escaped to Philadelphia, where African-American abolitionist William Still ran a station of the Underground Railroad, helping fugitive slaves on their journey north to freedom.
It's a longish article and an interesting read. At present, there is a move to name one of the lanes that run between city blocks in that part of Toronto after Albert Jackson. The Jackson family's history is part of the history of that neighbourhood (an area about 6 blocks by 6 blocks in downtown Toronto where I and all of my siblings have lived at various times, and where none of us could afford to live now).
This is a documentary about the Pennsylvania man who recorded the Jackson family's details as they travelled north:
http://www.toronto.com/article/712256--underground-railroad-conductor-william-still-chronicled-in-new-documentary
Google toronto underground railroad for quite a lot of interesting historical info.
There are Underground Railroad Museums in Toronto and Windsor, Ontario:
http://www.toronto.com/article/710983--black-history-month-explore-toronto-s-underground-railroad-history
The Toronto Archives has some interesting documentation:
http://www.toronto.ca/archives/blackhistory.htm
http://www.heritagetoronto.org/discover-toronto/photos/willliam-peyton-hubbard-black-history-month
Black Canadians elsewhere (many of whom descended from earlier refugees, in the post-US revolution years) did not all fare so well; the story of Africville in Nova Scotia is a permanent and ongoing blot on Canadian history:
http://www.stolenfromafricville.com/about-africville/
(edited post to fix a link)
bigtree
(86,049 posts)'people of colour'
iverglas
(38,549 posts)Way back then.
This is the transcript in question:
http://www.toronto.ca/archives/petitiontranscription.htm
His Worship the Mayor of Toronto
The petition of the undersigned, People of Colour; residing in the City of Toronto: Humbly Sheweth;
That your Petitioners are informed that a Company of "Circus Actors" from the United States (now travelling in this Province) are shortly to visit this City for the purpose of performing &c.
That Your Petitioners from the general and almost invariable practice of such Actors in their performances, have good reason to apprehend annoyances and insults, in the manner they endeavour to make the Coloured man appear ridiculous and contemptible in the eyes of their audience. Your Petitioners would humbly pray that Your Worship would be pleased to prevent the occurrence of such annoyances and insults, as Your Petitioners believe that such attempted Exhibitions of the African Character are not at all relished or approved of by the sensible and well thinking Inhabitants of this Community.
And Your Petitioners as in duty bound, will ever pray.
Toronto, 14th October 1841.
(James Johnson and 28 additional signatures attached)
... rats, when I copy the images, they come out giant-sized, but they're at that link to see.
typo edited
Ptah
(33,065 posts)WEST GLACIER - An often overlooked aspect of Glacier National Park's history is that its
earliest stewards were segregated black army regiments created during the Civil War and
whose members came to be known as "Buffalo Soldiers."
iverglas
(38,549 posts)the real Glacier National Park.
The Underground Railroad itself did not extend that far west in Canada ... but there was later black immigration to the west:
http://blackhistorycanada.ca/timeline.php?id=1900
By 1909, hundreds of Oklahoma Blacks had moved to the Canadian Prairies, where they met the same wariness and discrimination that had allowed slavery to exist in an earlier time. In February 1911, a few newspapers in Winnipeg even predicted that the Dominion government would move to exclude "Negro immigrants."
More unfortunately, there was much white immigration from the US to the Canadian west, and the religious/ethnic/political makeup of those groups is one explanation for the pronounced right-wing tendencies in western Canadian politics right up to today.
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/ku-klux-klan
Thereafter the Saskatchewan Klan declined rapidly, as did the organization in the rest of Canada. In the late 1970s the Klan attempted once more to organize in Canada, notably in Ontario, Alberta and BC. The organization's avowed white-supremacist stance and further outrages committed by the American Klan during this period have done little either to increase membership or to establish the Klan's credibility in the eyes of the Canadian public.
http://www.owensound.library.on.ca/page.php?PageID=188
Ontarios Crown Attorney charged four of the local Klan leaders with, going abroad at night in white masks, setting fires and defacing property. One spent three months in jail.
Nobody ever accused them of being smart.
Hm. One of my great-grandfathers was living in Owen Sound at that time, the mid-1920s, when the KKK organized there. He wouldn't have been interested; his fraternal order was apparently something called the Hindu Kush, which he took with him when he deserted from the British military in India circa 1878, and which I am told focused on encouraging men to be honourable.
However, and I never think of this because I only heard it fairly recently and it's so bizarre, I am also told that another great-grandfather of mine did join the KKK in southern Ontario around the same time, and I have not the slightest clue what that would have been about, other than some kind of joining the crowd. He wasn't a nice person anyhow, that much I do know. Odd behaviour for a railway engineer who seems to have had Quaker associations before leaving England.
He might have been here ...
http://www.ruralroutes.com/5783.html
Hands on each other's shoulders, they circled the fIeld three times to the tune ofhynms played by a Klan band and then the new members (more than 100 residents of nearby London were reported to have joined) took the oath before an altar and flaming cross
Just poking around ... it seems that the KKK had come north to my home town earlier to escape, itself -- to escape justice in the US:
http://www.altlondon.org/article.php?story=2007100106502159
Dr. Bratton was a Confederate war surgeon, and some say these men, working with far less supplies and medicines than their northern counterparts were the best surgeons in the world by war's end. Dr. Bratton was therefore likely a highly competent doctor and was to continue his medical research for the rest of his life. The doctor shortage in the 1870s was no better than it is today. Imagine if your child was run over by a horse cart and Dr. Bratton turned out to be the only one who could save him or her? As detested as the KKK would have been to good people, principles would take second place to the saving of your child's life by Dr. Bratton. These are the very real, everyday choices Londoners had to make in the past.
Actually, wealthy Londoners at the time were probably as racist and right-wing as they were when I grew up there.
Ptah
(33,065 posts)onpatrol98
(1,989 posts)nofurylike
(8,775 posts)thank you so very much for posting this!!
still reading, and links to go, but just had to say ....
Kick in to the DU tip jar?
This week we're running a special pop-up mini fund drive. From Monday through Friday we're going ad-free for all registered members, and we're asking you to kick in to the DU tip jar to support the site and keep us financially healthy.
As a bonus, making a contribution will allow you to leave kudos for another DU member, and at the end of the week we'll recognize the DUers who you think make this community great.