Before I talk about the Underground Railroad, I need to set the scene for my reflections this morning. Usually when I'm considering what the theme for a service will be I look at my calendar and datebook to see if there are any important dates that I should consider. When I did that in December, I noticed that January 25th came between Martin Luther King's birthday (a holiday in the US) and the beginning of Black History Month. I was about to dismiss both of these as themes, thinking that they were not particularly relevant to our Canadian experience or our lives in Waterloo Region, and also that I was incompetent to reflect on them in a service, not being Black, but then some countervailing thoughts popped into my head. First, Martin Luther King, Jr., is one of the revered leaders in modern religious, as well as social and political, history, and his wisdom is as relevant to our experience as that of his mentors Thich Naht Hanh, Gandhi, Jesus and the Hebrew prophets. We don't have a holiday for Martin Luther King in Canada. But his influence is strong in all matters affecting civil rights, non-violence and justice. I believe and intend that our theme this morning, Black History, is at least partially a tribute to that heroic figure.
Second, and I don't say this at all sarcastically because its dimensions have really been a revelation to me, there IS Black history, not only in Canada but right here in our region of Ontario. The Black population of our area may be a small proportion of the whole, but it's a much larger proportion of the whole than, say, Unitarians, so it certainly can't be dismissed simply on grounds of size! Third, I'm bold enough to speak on many subjects which I don't represent in my person, so why should I be so timid about Black history? And finally, simply preparing to speak about this has been, as I knew it would be, a great learning experience for me, and perhaps I can pass on a little bit of that to you.
Black History Month has been observed in the US since 1926, but it wasn't until the late 1970s that the newly formed Ontario Black History Society persuaded Council to follow the example of the United States and declare that henceforth February would be known as Black History Month. In Ontario, provincial recognition came in January 1993 with the following proclamation:
WHEREAS throughout its long history, Ontario has been characterized by its diverse and distinctive culture;
AND WHEREAS our society's fundamental strength lies in its unique cultural pluralism;
AND WHEREAS from the time of its establishment, people of African descent have made significant contributions to the development of the province;
AND WHEREAS the Black community continues to play a vital role within the social and cultural mosaic that is Ontario;
AND WHEREAS 1993 is the 200th anniversary of the passage of legislation prohibiting the importation of slaves into Upper Canada and providing for the gradual abolition of slavery;
THEREFORE a proclamation be issued naming the month of FEBRUARY 1993 Black History Month in Ontario; a time to celebrate the uniqueness, vitality and continuing contribution of the Black community in Ontario.
National recognition followed in1995 when the House of Commons agreed unanimously to the following motion:
That this House take note of the important contribution of black Canadians to the settlement, growth and development of Canada, the diversity of the black community in Canada and its importance to the history of this country, and recognize February as black history month.
So what IS the Black History that we celebrate in February? When I began structuring the service, I planned to start with the story of the Underground Railway that's most familiar to us, and I wrote to Margaret last Monday: "..... early black history in Ontario ..... [is, I suppose,] largely the story of the escape from slavery." What I hadn't realized was how early this escape began. For example, Among the Loyalists who came to Upper Canada over two hundred years ago were several hundred Blacks, representing about 10% of the total Loyalist emigration. Some had fought on the British side during the American Revolution. In 1793, the Upper Canada Abolition Act, supported by Lieutenant-Governor Simcoe, stipulated that any child born of a slave mother who had been brought into Canada should be free at the age of 25.
In 1812, refugees of the War of 1812 were invited to become British citizens through residence in British territory, including Canada, and various settlements were established by the government in 1819 for black veterans of that war. One of these was Priceville, between Flesherton and Durham, not far from here at all. Margaret Neigh lent me a wonderfully enlightening video produced by the National Film Board, called Speakers for the Dead, which is all about Priceville, but before I say more about that, let me just mention that another early settlement, even closer to our home, was the "Pierpoint Settlement", in Garafraxa Township just outside present-day Fergus.
In 1821, Richard Pierpoint, a black veteran of the War of 1812, petitioned Lieutenant Governor Simcoe for passage back to his original homeland in Senegal (he'd been captured there in his youth and taken as a slave to America), but his request to go home to Africa was denied and he was, you might say, railroaded to Garafraxa, where he and eight or ten other black families were given land grants. By 1826, Pierpoint had built a cabin and cleared a small plot of land, according to the requirements of the land grant, which were
to clear and fence 5 acres for every 100 acres granted; to erect a dwelling house of 16 by 20 feet; to clear one half of the Road in front of each lot. The whole to be performed within two years ...
But the Pierpoint settlement broke up in about 1840 and the people left for other, already established black settlements, including Priceville, which had been founded by Col. Price, another Black war veteran. Incidentally, none of the hundreds of websites I looked at on the internet - websites with information about Priceville - mentioned that it was named for a black person.
The Priceville settlers, according to the video, also included Blacks from Wellesley and Waterloo County, who had moved up the Old Durham Road to an area where they, too, had been promised land grants; the problem was that they were never given deeds to the land on which they settled, or had any proof of ownership, and they were eventually treated as squatters and evicted. By mid-20th century, the only visible Black history was a pile of stones from which, in the 1990s, local historians have reconstructed tombstones of four Black pioneers, knowing that there had once been a Black cemetery with far more gravesites than that. The cemetery had become part of a white person's property - a person characterized by his neighbours as "unsentimental", who ploughed the cemetery ground for a potato field, and according to local legend used gravestones to pave the floor of his stable and basement. Other stones may have been makeshift wooden markers which simply rotted away. Except for those four people whose tombstones have been reconstructed, the Black dead of Priceville have been almost erased from existence. They came there by ways now hidden in history, and they lie unnoticed, underground.
This is not the Underground Railroad you were probably thinking of when you saw the title, I'll bet. I've included it under this part of my Reflection because it's about a part of Black history in Ontario that was very "underground" and very much a "railroad" in its more colloquial sense. Underground: in the video, a word that kept on coming up was "secret". No one in Priceville talked freely about their Black history; it was discussed mostly in whispers. In the present generation of Priceville residents and their descendants, some people are realizing that they have Black ancestry; others, who've known that all along, are realizing that their parents hoped they would hide it, because they could pass for white. Family photographs were burned if they showed obviously Black relatives; records were destroyed, like those tombstones in the old cemetery - not out of conscious racism but out of a wish to make things easier, not to be "sentimental" about knowing who your family were. As one of the few remaining Black residents said, it was all underground. In the States, there were signs and regulations about who could go where and when; in Ontario, people just knew they should keep the unofficial sundown curfew for Blacks, and take particular care when they dared to go to certain places. They hardly protested against being railroaded out of town. But it is changing, thank God. As one Black woman said, in words that gave the video its name, "We must speak for the Dead, so that even if they were broken and disrespected, we can pull ourselves together and survive."
Back to the more familiar Underground Railroad, the name given to that secret network of paths and trails and heroic conductors - and I doubt it's really familiar enough. Physically, it was neither underground nor a railroad. It was a loosely constructed network of escape routes, begun by abolitionists both white and black, that originated in the Southern United States, wound its way to the less restricted North and eventually stretched to Canada.The first major wave of fugitive slaves to Canada was 1817-1820 and the choice of refuge was Essex County, located east of Windsor, as it was the easiest and fastest to reach from the States. Underground Railroad terminals in Ontario included almost any ports on Lake Erie and the Niagara River, as well as some further inland. Many Great Lakes ships would carry runaways without charge and drop them on Canadian soil. The whole system succeeded because of the cooperation and trust among various religious and ethnic groups who moved slaves in the direction of the North Star through a highly secretive network. And though few slaves had a formal education, they were able to develop an elaborate code which guided thousands to freedom in the North.
In 1834, the British Imperial Act officially abolished slavery in the British Empire, which included Canada, and traffic on the Railroad increased. The height of its operation was from then till the 1860s. A song from around that time said, "I'm on my way to Canada, that cold and distant land. / The dire effects of slavery I can no longer stand. / Farewell, old master: don't come after me. / I'm on my way to Canada where coloured men are free." Many "old masters" did come after their slaves. In 1850, the passing of a second Fugitive Slave Act in the United States placed all people of African descent at risk (something like the Patriot Act, perhaps), and the Underground Railroad further stepped up its operations.
The impact was certainly felt in Ontario: one of its very mixed-value effects was the Common Schools Act which permitted the development of segregated schools. (Incidentally, and to our shame, it wasn't until the 1950s that the last segregated school in Ontario closed.) Overall, although most fugitive slaves got no further than the free states of the American North, 20 to 30 thousand blacks found their way into Canada via the Underground Railroad, and tended to cluster in Black settlements as refugees do. There were, for instance, an estimated 1,500 black settlers in "Queen's Bush Settlement", which was an area eight by twelve miles in size, including the northern half of Wellesley Township, the western portion of Woolwich Township and the southern half of Peel Township.
In case you hadn't realized it, I find the story of the Underground Railroad deeply inspiring, and I'm well aware that I've only begun to get to know it. Let's spend some time in meditation now, first singing a hymn which both I and Virginia Mathews independently and almost simultaneously identified as the perfect one for this morning. As you'll see from your hymn book, it's a code song which was for those who'd been well-taught both a map and a timetable for the Underground Railroad. We'll stay seated to sing, and if it's a new tune to you, listen until you're familiar with it and join in when you're ready. After the song, there'll be a time of silent meditation, followed by more music.
Let's look now at some more recent Black history. In some cases, what I'm going to say is "history" by default, just because the only information available is sometimes quite outdated, but most of it is the ongoing story of our community - living history. The nearest I could come to an estimate of the percentage of the population who're black in Waterloo Region was around 1.5% -- that was in 1996 and it may well be higher now; it's almost certainly not decreasing. That percentage represents about 5, 800 individuals, largely people whose origins were in the Caribbean (especially Jamaicans), Guyana and East Africa (especially Somalis). Since the time of slavery and the Underground Railroad, there have been thousands of immigrant journeys to Canada by black people. Many of them have fulfilled their hopes and expectations here; others have found hardship and disappointment. Almost all have found themselves in a country which is abysmally ignorant of Black history, despite the proud part that Canada played in giving a home to African American slaves, slaves who had been taken into captivity from the same ancestral homes as those of today's immigrants.
In many Canadian high school curricula there is not even a mention of the Underground Railroad, or of the less admirable fact that slaves were kept in Canada for 200 years, or of the Queen's Bush or the other settlements of modern Waterloo, Wellington, Dufferin, Grey and Bruce counties. Of course, there will be special community events for Black History Month (an article in yesterday's Record makes that clear) and some schools may have a guest speaker or an activity designed to improve racial tolerance. The Ontario Grade 7 curriculum now requires some teaching of black settlement patterns in Canada. But teachers who want to offer a study of Canadian black history beyond this still have to act like guerrilla fighters, slipping it into the demanding, crowded curriculum. Those who do so believe it's just as important for white kids as for black ones to study black history, because the experiences of blacks, and the response to the racism and abuse they suffered, have laid the foundation for Canadian human rights law today.
Every idea of discrimination has its roots in the black experience," one teacher said. "The black experience started before legislation. Every other racial group that came into Canada has benefited from the (black) experience. We need to look at that experience. It's fundamentally important.
And a Grade 11 student added:
When we hear about (civil rights leader) Martin Luther King Jr., we kind of relate to his struggle. But we have to learn about it outside the classroom, and even that is not our own Canadian history.
The unfortunate thing is that people believe there's less prejudice now so it's not necessary to do so much education. Even if that optimistic assessment is true, it's hardly a good reason for neglecting history. As an educator has pointed out:
Eurocentric history as taught in schools and universities has had a very large ego-boosting, if not therapeutic, purpose for whites. ... It's [important] that Blacks should have some confidence building in their [education].
So it's not only the history of Blacks in Canada which needs attention: an overall view of ancient African civilizations and ancient African cultures is required to get rid of all myths about the African past, which continues to linger in the minds of Black and African peoples everywhere. And that is what Black History Month is all about. An African saying reminds us: "Know your history and you will always be wise."
"Know your history and you will always be wise." It isn't always easy. Yesterday John and I went to the Kitchener Public Library, mainly to see Jack MacAulay's photography exhibit, but also to see if I could discover the first name of that Col. Price who founded Priceville. Much to our delight, John found a large, glossy, 1992 illustrated history of Priceville, full of photos and details of early inhabitants, their farms, churches and cemeteries.
In the 250 pages of this coffee-table type book, a scant single page was devoted to the black origins of the community, and Col. Price was given no initials, let alone a first name. Rather disapprovingly, the book stated that the Colonel, "a black gentleman from Alabama," in the book's words, had turned the first sod and named the place after himself. There was no other reference to him at all. That journey from Alabama to Ontario, and then from the border up to the wild land of what is now Grey County - what was it like? Did he have family? How did they cope with a winter like this, when they had been slaves in the deep South? We'll probably never know from any records which have been kept.
But it doesn't have to be this way. We don't have to continue denigrating people among us by ignoring their existence. Barely a year after Black History month was established in 1995, a small group of local Caribbean and Guyanan families gathered in a rented room in Kitchener to build a Christian congregation where no one, regardless of colour, background, status, gender, wealth, ability, age, or any other "difference," would ever again feel left out. Recalling his own journey, from childhood on a Caribbean sugar plantation, to a teaching career in England, to answering the call of Lutheran ministry in Canada, the pastor warned his Maranatha Evangelical Lutheran congregation, that day in 1996, that Christians must not passively ignore or hide from racism.
Calling racism, in Biblical imagery, "the infection of an unclean spirit in the world," he urged all people of faith (I think that might include Unitarians!) to confront racism by speaking the truth in love and forgiveness. "[Racism] may not come to you in long white robes with pointed hoods," he said, referring to the stereotypical Ku Klux Klan garb of the 1950s and 1960s. "Instead, it may come to you in a pin-striped suit and polite words." I would add that it may come even in totally invisible form, as omission, as being left out. But the pastor concluded that it is possible, it is even happening, that people of every colour can live together in renewed hope, "rejoicing in the wealth and beauty of [ their] heritage."
Black History month is one attempt to have the achievements of people of African descent in Canada included in our history books, our education system and, even more vitally, in our consciousness. As Unitarians, whose principles are about the inherent worth and dignity of every person, about peace, liberty and justice for all, and about the interdependent web of all existence, may we participate as much as we can in honouring this heritage. May the Rainbow on our sign at the front of this Unitarian House extend its meaning as widely as possible, to welcome not only people of all sexual orientations but as it symbolism even more clearly suggests, all colours too. So far as it is humanly possible for us, may we leave no one, and no people's history, out of our appreciation, caring and inclusion. So may it be.