Black Canadians: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia

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During the course of one week in June 1854, 23 run-away slaves evaded the U.S. border patrols to cross the Detroit river to freedom in Windsor while 43 free people also crossed over to Windsor out of the fear of the bounty hunters.<ref name="Hill" />{{rp|32}} The American-born Canadian sociologist [[Daniel G. Hill]] wrote this week in June 1854 appeared to be typical of the black exodus to Canada.<ref name="Hill" />{{rp|32}} Public opinion tended to be on the side of run-away slaves and against the slavers. On 26 February 1851, the Toronto chapter of the Anti-Slavery Society was founded with what was described by the ''Globe'' newspaper as "the largest and most enthusiastic meeting we have ever seen in Toronto" that issued the resolution: "slavery is an outrage on the laws of humanity and its continued practice demands the best exertions for its extinction".<ref name="Hill" />{{rp|20}} The same meeting committed its members to help the many "houseless and homeless victims of slavery flying to our soil".<ref name="Hill" />{{rp|20}} The Congregationalist minister, the Reverend [[Samuel Ringgold Ward]] of New York, who had been born into slavery in Maryland, wrote about Canada West (modern Ontario) that: "Toronto is somewhat peculiar in many ways, anti-slavery is more popular there than in any city I know save Syracuse...I had good audiences in the towns of Vaughan, Markham, Pickering and in the village of Newmarket. Anti-slavery feeling is spreading and increasing in all these places. The public mind literally thirsts for the truth, and honest listeners and anxious inquirers will travel many miles, crowd our country chapels, and remain for hours eagerly and patiently seeking the light".<ref name="Hill" />{{rp|20}} Ward himself had been forced to flee to Canada West in 1851 for his role in the [[Jerry Rescue]], leading to his indictment for violating the Fugitive Slave Act. Despite the support to run-away slaves, Black people in Canada West, which become Ontario in 1867, were confined to segregated schools.<ref name="Walker"/>

American [[bounty-hunters hunter]]s who crossed into Canada to kidnap black people to sell into slavery were prosecuted for kidnapping if apprehended by the authorities.<ref name="Hill" />{{rp|42}} In 1857, an attempt by two American bounty hunters, T.G. James and John Wells, to kidnap Joseph Alexander, a 20-year-old run-away slave from New Orleans living in Chatham, was foiled when a large crowd of black people surrounded the bounty hunters as they were leaving the Royal Exchange Hotel in Chatham with Alexander who had gone there to confront them.<ref name="Hill" />{{rp|43}} Found on one of the bounty hunters was a letter from Alexander's former master describing him as a slave of "saucy" disposition who had smashed the master's carriage and freed a span of his horses before running away, adding that he was keen to get Alexander back so he could castrate him.<ref name="Hill" />{{rp|43}} Castration was the normal punishment for a male run-away slave. Alexander gave a speech to the assembled by-standers watching the confrontation denouncing life in the "slave pens" of New Orleans as extremely dehumanizing and stated he would rather die than return to living as a slave.<ref name="Hill" />{{rp|43}} Alexander described life in the "slave pens" as a regime of daily whippings, beatings and rapes designed to cow the slaves into a state of utter submission. The confrontation ended with Alexander being freed and the crowd marching Wells and James to the railroad station, warning them to never return to Chatham.<ref name="Hill" />{{rp|32}}

[[File:William Hall VC.jpg|thumb|left|200px|William Hall of Horton, Nova Scotia was the first black man to win the Victoria Cross]]

The refugee slaves who settled in Canada did so primarily in [[Black Canadians in Ontario|South Western Ontario]], with significant concentrations being found in Amherstburg, Colchester, Chatham, Windsor, and Sandwich. Run-away slaves tended to concentrate, partly to provide mutual support, partly because of prejudices, and partly out of the fear of American bounty hunters crossing the border.<ref name="Walker"/> The run-away slaves usually arrived destitute and without any assets, had to work as laborers for others until they could save up enough money to buy their own farms.<ref name="Walker"/> These settlements acted as centres of abolitionist thought, with Chatham being the location of abolitionist [[John Brown (abolitionist)|John Brown's]] constitutional convention which preceded the later raid on [[John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry|Harper's Ferry]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|url = http://journals2.scholarsportal.info/pdf/14788810/v08i0002/165_oocaotcf.xml|title = Out of Chatham: Abolitionism on the Canadian frontier|last = Heike|first = Paul|date = 2011|journal = Atlantic Studies|page = 169}}</ref> The first newspaper published by a black woman was founded in North Buxton by the free Black [[Mary Ann Shadd]] which pressed for Black emigration to Canada as the best option for fleeing African Americans.<ref name=":0" /> The settlement of [[North Buxton|Elgin]] was formed in 1849 with the royal assent of Governor-General of the time [[James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin|James Bruce]] as a settlement for Black Canadians and escaped slaves based upon social welfare and the prevention of moral decay among the Black community there. Led by the Elgin Association and preacher William King, the settlement flourished as a model of a successful predominantly African settlement which held close to 200 families by 1859.<ref>{{Cite book|title='Whatever you Raise in the ground you can sell it in Chatham': Black Women in Buxton and Chatham, 1850–1865|last=Bristow|first=Peggy|publisher=University of Toronto Press|year=1994|isbn=978-0802068811|location=Toronto|pages=75–79}}</ref>