Emancipation Day. Natasha L. Henry
located across the continent. On his 1854 visit to Canada West, Levi Coffin, “president” of the Underground Railroad, attended Emancipation Day celebrations in the Maidstone area, which he described as, “a dense settlement of fugitives about eight miles south of Windsor.”36 He was part of a large group from Windsor, who, along with other guests, gathered at the schoolhouse run by Laura Haviland, a White Canadian-born Quaker, at the request of Henry Bibb and his Refugee Home Society in Sandwich. Invited speakers from Detroit delivered public addresses on a stage set up in a grove near the school. Coffin met and received many thanks from several freedom seekers he had assisted in their flight to Canada.37 In 1855, an estimated seven thousand people turned out at Prince’s Grove, the majority of them fugitives from American slavery, including thirteen who had been assisted to freedom by John Brown, a White revolutionary abolitionist from Kansas, and his son. Colonel Prince delivered remarks along with Eli Ford from Chicago. The evening galas were held in Windsor.38
However, by the 1890s, the direction and nature of Emancipation Day observances in Sandwich changed from a celebration of freedom, the maintenance of historic memories, and support of education to merriment and frivolity, so much so that leaders in the Black community, primarily church ministers, were calling for the event to be cancelled. What resulted were two different kinds of celebrations in the Windsor area, as described by the Windsor Evening Record in 1895. When celebrants from near and far arrived in Windsor, they split into two distinct groups: the first went to Walker’s Grove in Windsor and the second headed for Mineral Springs39 in Sandwich. The commemoration in Windsor was more serious in tone, focusing on spiritual and community prosperity through a steady schedule of lectures by notable local leaders such as Mayor Clarence Mason and Black alderman Robert Dunn. In contrast, the company in Sandwich did away with some of the traditional aspects of Emancipation Day in favour of having a good time by replacing them with lots of music, sporting activities, and barbecues.40
Colin McFarquhar, an assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Waterloo, suggests that the separation occurred because slavery was in the remote past for too many of the attendees and few survivors were alive to tell the stories. Another reason he identifies is the decrease in speeches that recognized late freedom fighters and staunch abolitionists, resulting in the weakening of the collective memory that had been important in passing on shared historical experiences and cultural values.41
In the years immediately following, celebrations in Sandwich saw the introduction and growth of gambling, drinking, rowdy behaviour, and dance halls at Lagoon Park and surrounding venues. All of which became major problems, drawing complaints from both Black and White community leaders. In 1905, the mayor officially banned gambling and extra officers were hired to patrol the park grounds, instructing the police to arrest anyone who attempted to set up a game.42
Seven years later an association of Black church ministers appealed to the Sandwich town council to cancel the festivities, but they refused, perhaps because the stream of ten thousand people every summer brought an economic boom to the town. It is also interesting to note the change in tone of the media coverage of events. Previously, sermons and speeches were highlighted first at great length and the conduct of the crowd was always described as orderly. At the turn of the twentieth century the crap games, the arrests, and food were the main topics, with public addresses receiving little if any press, and the decorum that was highlighted favourably for the first sixty years of the celebration diminished greatly. Newspaper editors of the Windsor Evening Record joined in the chorus of unhappy Black voices calling for an end to the current trend of observances.
In 1913, the mayor of Sandwich, Edward Donnelly, announced that he would do his best to see that years’ celebration be the last because the event organizers refused to pay for the extra police officers that secured the event. His decision seems also to have been influenced by the pressure from the African-Canadian church ministers, coupled with the deterioration of the event.43
Interestingly, Mitchell Kachun, author of Festivals of Freedom, describes similar protests by African-American leaders about the change in objectives of the August First celebrations in the United States during the early 1900s. These leaders across North America wanted a separation of popular entertainment and commemorative events as the former threatened the spirit of Emancipation Day, and, by extension, the political movements in their respective communities. He argues that the shift was illustrative of a continental trend of increasing “commercialization of leisure,” urbanization, and the development of popular culture that was impacting all forms of early culture across Canada and the United States and not just freedom festivals.44 By 1915, Emancipation Day observances in Sandwich had ceased. Consequently, it appears as though the original meaning of August First as a commemoration of freedom, rights, and opportunities could not be reconciled with the emergence of mass entertainment.
By the 1830s and 1840s sizeable Black communities had developed in places such as Windsor, Sandwich, Amherstburg, and the surrounding vicinity. Hundreds of fugitives entered Canada by crossing the Detroit River, taking advantage of the more straightforward access point. Many came to Windsor because the town was a major terminus on the Underground Railroad, and along with Sandwich offered an initial safe haven for fugitive slaves. Dr. Daniel Hill identifies the first influx of refugees as arriving between 1817 and 1822.45
By the mid-nineteenth century, Windsor was emerging as a booming commercial and industrial centre. There were over fifty Black families living there by 1851 and seven to eight hundred individuals by 1868. Many of the Black men worked for the Great Western Railway in the construction of the rail lines and later as porters for the trains. Others were employed as labourers, barbers, coopers, draymen, preachers, and sailors. One man was working as an engineer, and another man, named Labalinin Harris, was a postman. Members of the town’s African-Canadian community owned an array of businesses including plastering, masonry, and carpentry companies, blacksmith shops, tailor shops, grocery and general merchandise stores, shoemaking shops, a confectionery shop, a paint and varnish store, and several farms. Black women were mainly employed as washerwomen and domestics, while a few were teachers.
Most Blacks in Windsor resided on McDougall, Assumption, Pitt, Pellisier, Church, and Goyeau Streets as well as on Bruce Avenue. With the Black population growing daily, several cultural institutions were established to aid in settlement, provide a sense of solidarity, challenge American slavery, and to help their members weather the increasing racism that punctuated their daily lives.
Although not welcomed in many White churches, Blacks in Windsor actually preferred to worship amongst themselves and several Black churches took root in Windsor. The British Methodist Episcopal Church was constructed on McDougall and Assumption Streets in 1863. The First Baptist Church used two buildings on McDougall Street near Albert in 1856 and 1862, and then in 1915 they relocated to a new location at Mercer and Tuscarora Streets. A Baptist Church formed the Amherst Regular Missionary and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, although in existence for decades, through worship in homes, erected a building at Mercer and Assumption in 1889.
To meet the educational needs of the community, mission schools or private schools were established to serve the children and the adults of the Black community, the African-Canadian children in Windsor having been barred from attending common schools. Before earning the distinction of becoming the first female editor of a newspaper in North America, Mary Ann Shadd was hired as a teacher in a private school for Black children in Windsor. Classes were held in the old military barracks in 1851 until a schoolhouse was built in 1852. A handful of White children also attended this school. When Shadd left in 1853, there were no separate common schools for the growing Black population until 1858 when the Board rented an old, run-down building to serve its purpose. In 1862, the St. George School was built for African-Canadian children at McDougall and Assumption Streets. By 1864, the school was accommodating 150 students.
Blacks in Windsor organized other self-help societies to further strengthen the community like the Temperance Society formed by Robert Ward and Henry Bibb, the Mutual Improvement Society established by Mary Bibb “to hear speeches and