Klan quickly reduced Blacks to second-class status. It was a policy later adopted in South Africa.
This dark period of discriminatory laws and customs known as Jim Crow, after an old minstrel song, culminated with the 1896 Plessy versus Ferguson case legalizing educational segregation as long as schools were separate but equal, a standard seldom enforced.
Canadians deplored these more overt American apartheid practices but, as their actions dating back to the 1850s showed, they often betrayed a peculiar ambivalence when it came to condemning racism in all of its forms.
Another face of Canada—the integrated line-up of a Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, baseball team, the 1895 territorial champions.
Black Canadians were never certain as to how genuine their welcome had been. At the end of the Civil War many of them believed prospects were better in their former homeland. They began returning to the United States, a migration that continued even after the initial positive steps there were undone. From a high of around 60,000 residents at the start of the American Civil War in 1860, Canada’s Black population had shrunk to fewer than 18,000 by the turn of the century.
Black Canadians were discouraged by the experiences of groups like the all-Black Victoria Pioneer Rifle Company, formed from the ranks of those invited in 1858 to Vancouver Island during the gold rush days. Though they defended Victoria from potential American incursion and supported British Columbia’s eventual entry into Confederation, they were barred from public ceremonies. The British rejected their appeal for official status as an established regiment. When it became clear that the United States would not invade this part of Canada, the company disbanded.
Black communities, with a few notable exceptions, were separate from white society and became an almost invisible part of the country’s history. Over the next century, there was no great influx of Blacks as there had been prior to the Civil War. The majority of those who came did so as individuals or as family members. Some were Americans fed up with that country’s segregation practices; others were job-seeking emigrants from the West Indies.
There were only a few occasions when Blacks arrived as part of a larger contingent. At least 1,000 Black Oklahomans moved into the northern prairies between 1909 and 1911. Despite their small numbers, they encountered prejudice. Between 1921 and 1951 the small Black community in Alberta fell from just over 1,000 to 700 persons.
Many Alberta farmers were white Americans. In April 1911, their anti-Black sentiments were inflamed by the story of a 15-year-old Edmonton girl who accused a Black man of assault. Newspapers attacked the “Negro Menace” and the “Negro Atrocity” only to be silenced nine days later when the girl admitted she had made up the story.
In that same year Albertans sent a petition to the Prime Minister. It read, “It is a matter of common knowledge and it has been proved in the United States that Negroes and whites cannot live in proximity without the occurrence of revolting lawlessness and the development of bitter race hatred, and that the most serious question facing the United States today is the Negro problem…There is no reason to believe that we have here [in Canada] a higher order of civilization, or that the introduction of the Negro problem here would have different results.”
Descendants of early African-American immigrants to Alberta around the turn of the century are found in this photograph of the all-Black Amber Valley Baseball Club in Alberta, circa 1950. Courtesy of Glenbow Archives, NA-704-5.
Anti-Black sentiment flourished in other parts of the prairies. In Saskatchewan there were upwards of 10,000 Ku Klux Klan members or their sympathizers by the end of the 1920s. Likewise in the more urban areas of eastern Canada, the majority white population continued to oppose Black entry into jobs and integrated neighbourhoods, claiming it would cause social turmoil as in the United States.
Within their isolated communities, Blacks had few institutional supports beyond the church. They attempted to develop a self-sufficient economic base but their communities weren’t large enough to support either an independent farming lifestyle or their own businesses. Many Blacks were forced to seek manual labour in nearby cities or join the growing ranks of porters working for the various railroads.
During the First World War, an unwritten policy of the Canadian armed forces discouraged Black participation because it would, supposedly, drive away white volunteers. Despite this propaganda, the all-Black Number Two Construction Battalion was formed with a majority of recruits from Nova Scotia. During the war, a Black Canadian soldier Jeremiah Jones distinguished himself by capturing a German machine gun post.
American Blacks, meanwhile, were beginning to experience a cultural flowering of their own. The Harlem Renaissance’s geographic impact in the 1920s went far beyond New York City. It was sparked by literary, musical and artistic expression. The jazz and blues recordings of American Blacks of this age are part of a legacy reputed to be the only true American musical innovation. A renewed sense of Black pride found expression in organizations like Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association.
In Canada, where numbers were small and spread over great distances, a cultural and organizational renaissance of this scope was almost impossible. Following an example from the American labour movement however, a Canadian union of sleeping car porters marked an important step forward for Black community organization. Their leaders included Winnipeg’s Piercy Haynes (whose non-railway interests included boxing and jazz) and his wife Zena, a jazz singer. Religion was also important, particularly organized churches like Winnipeg’s Pilgrim Baptist Church and the African Baptist United Church in Nova Scotia.
The struggle for racial equality, however, would be fought largely in the United States. It had begun with the campaign to end slavery culminating in the American Civil War. It continued through the imposed burdens of Jim Crow legislation and it included proposals by some leaders for a return to Africa.
By the time of the Second World War, the American Civil Rights Movement, through the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP), focused on removing legislated restrictions and creating opportunities for full participation in American economic life. Canadians were often bemused spectators.
Blacks for instance had to fight for the opportunity to join Canada’s armed forces in the Second World War. Ironically during this period Black American writers like Richard Wright found Canada a refuge from the unpleasant features of segregated American life. But in Nova Scotia, conditions differed little from those south of the border. Theatres in Cape Breton for instance maintained separate seating and as late as the 1950s restaurants in Dresden, Ontario, refused to serve Black patrons.
Organizations like the CBC provided Black American entertainers with a televised forum from which they were often shut out in the United States. At the same time Canadian Blacks remained outside the country’s mainstream. However, the Canadian Negro Women’s Association, founded in 1951, laid the foundation for future Black events like Toronto’s annual Caribana celebration and Black History Month. They protested policing practices and media improprieties and offered scholarships for promising students.
Canada’s small Black population lacked political clout but that soon changed. Great Britain began closing its doors on further emigration from the West Indies in the 1950s and encouraged other Commonwealth countries to open their doors. There was a clamour for Canada to loosen its restrictions.
Black activists also worked with members of other minorities, such as the Jewish community, to entrench human rights protection in Canadian law. By 1960 Canada had passed a new Bill of Rights rejecting discrimination based on race, colour, religion, gender and national origin.
The rising Civil Rights Movement in the United States was a powerful model for Canadian reformers. At the same time events in the British Commonwealth spurred further action. Canadians were appalled by the treatment of Blacks in South Africa, but their own immigration policy was cause for similar shame. The existing 1923 statute explicitly favoured white British applicants. In 1962