Emancipation Day. Natasha L. Henry
grandest and most elaborate Emancipation Day celebrations in Canada for over three decades through the 1930s to 1966. At its zenith in the 1940s to 1950s, the Windsor festival attracted more than two hundred thousand people annually. The August First celebration in Windsor was once the largest outdoor cultural festival in North America, drawing a racially-mixed crowd and receiving ongoing support from like-minded people in the United States.
The ninety-seventh Emancipation Day anniversary celebration was held in 1931 with guests from Ontario and the United States under the auspices of the British-America Association of Colored Brothers (BAACB).55 Approximately twenty thousand visitors were in attendance. This celebration was particularly historic as it also marked the centenary of the Underground Railroad into Canada. Letters of acknowledgement were received from Prime Minister Robert Borden Bennett, Premier Mitch Hepburn, Toronto’s Mayor James Simpson, and Robert Moton of Tuskegee College in Alabama.59 Honoured guests included Ray Lewis, the track athlete from Hamilton. The growth and popularity of Windsor’s Emancipation Day celebrations during this time period can be attributed to Walter Perry,60 the festival’s organizer since 1931 when he launched “The Greatest Freedom Show on Earth.” For over thirty years, “Mr. Emancipation,” as Walter was kindly known, worked diligently to restore the importance of a sense of community and history to the annual event. He worked tirelessly to revamp the commemoration because he wanted to create a better image. Under Perry’s leadership, the festivities expanded to four days, keeping most of the traditional elements while incorporating some newer forms of entertainment.
Event organizer, Walter “Mr. Emancipation” Perry, is the man in the white shirt who is shown walking along with the parade at the left of centre in the photograph.
Windsor’s yearly parade started from Riverside Drive at the edge of the Detroit River and marched north along Ouellette Avenue. The two-mile long procession, which ended at the Jackson Park grounds at Tecumseh Road West, required three hours to reach its destination. Crowds of Black and White people lined the parade route. Parade participants from Ontario and Michigan towns and cities included drill teams, marching bands, dignitaries, floats of Miss Sepia contestants, community businesses, and fraternal organizations. There was always a mix of entertainment at the park grounds such as fair rides, talent and beauty contests, sporting events, musical performances, speeches, and skill demonstrations that drew elite as well as up-and-coming athletes, singers, and community leaders. World-famous boxer Joe Louis fought in a friendly match. Jesse Owens, a 1936 Olympic gold medallist, demonstrated his track and field abilities. A young Diana Ross competed in a talent contest. Musical acts like the Temptations, the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Sammy Davis Jr., and numerous gospel choirs performed over the years. Even actress Dorothy Dandridge attended on one occasion. Homegrown artists and groups also performed, such as the popular North Buxton Maple Leaf Band, formed by Ira Shadd in 1955, who participated in Emancipation Day parades in Windsor beginning in 1960.
Multiple spectators line the street to witness the Emancipation Day parade in Windsor. Parading past is the Union Company No.1, a Black Masonic Lodge from Detroit, Michigan.
Perry returned to the tradition of education and honouring the rich past of Africans in North America and the motherland through the mindful selection of speakers and the publication Progress. The magazine included articles about the history of Africans such as the Transatlantic Slave Trade, slavery, resistance, runaways to Canada, abolition, the achievements of Blacks in Windsor and North America, and the fight for equality and justice. It also contained advertisements for local businesses, both Black and White, and the program for Emancipation Day detailing the events and speakers at Jackson Park.
The goals and aims of the civil rights movement were intricately woven into Emancipation Day programming, to heighten awareness and challenge the policies and practices that denied African Canadians their full rights. One such infringement was the denial of the right of Black men to serve in the Canadian military during the Second World War. Other human rights infractions included the ongoing refusal of service in restaurants and bars, barriers to hotel accommodations and housing, and discrimination in employment and education. The BAACB also worked with other community groups in Essex County to address racism. They collectively received reinforcement from various levels in the region. Alvin McCurdy, president of the Amherstburg Community Club and active trade unionist, wrote to the federal government in 1943 expressing that African Canadians “want every single right and privilege to which our citizenship entitles us, no more, no less,”61 and, in 1947,Walter Perry appealed for “greater understanding of created racial problems.”62 Obviously, this formula was proving successful as the number of participants climbed steadily. In 1947, approximately fifteen thousand assembled at Jackson Park, while the 1948 event saw an astounding 275 thousand attend, and in 1949 about 120 thousand gathered.63
As part of the annual program, the BAACB presented awards to various citizens, politicians, and organizations; people such as Walter P. Reuther, the international president of the United Auto Workers– Congress of International Unions (UAW–CIO), and those individuals who had contributed to the betterment of the African race in some way. His brother, in an acceptance speech on Reuther’s behalf in 1950, declared, “While Jim Crow may have been kicked off the assembly line, he still lives smugly in many homes and many other places where humans gather.”64 One way the UAW–CIO had contributed to the civil rights movement in Windsor had taken place seven years prior when the union took a position against racial discrimination waged against a Black military officer who was refused service at a local restaurant. The union wrote a letter of support and distributed pamphlets to its members denouncing the racist action.
The 1950s witnessed the height of the American Civil Rights movement aimed at putting an end to Jim Crow laws legalizing the practice of discrimination against descendants of African slaves. But the battle for democracy and equal rights among Blacks and Whites was brewing in Canada as well. The BAACB invited civil rights activists from the United States throughout the mid-1940s to the 1960s, to motivate African Canadians to act against racism and to show how much they had achieved since the end of slavery. Numerous Black civil rights activists addressed Emancipation Day audiences in Windsor. American congressman and church minister Adam Clayton Powell was a guest speaker in 1945. Mary McLeod Bethune, an African-American female civil right activist,65 and Eleanor Roosevelt, President Franklin Roosevelt’s wife, spoke at Windsor’s Emancipation Day festivals in 1954. Twenty-seven-year-old Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. attended in 1956 just after garnering international attention for leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott triggered by the arrest of Rosa Parks. The next decade saw speakers like Daisy Bates,66 an American civil rights activist; Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth,67 Baptist minister and civil rights activist in Birmingham, Alabama; and Mrs. Medgar “Myrlie” Evers,68 wife of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, deliver addresses to the throngs of people at Jackson Park. Emancipation Day had returned to its roots of being an effective political vehicle for the African-Canadian community.69
Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was the first African-American to be elected as a city councillor in New York City, in 1941. He was a special guest at Windsor’s Emancipation Day celebrations in 1945. A prominent civil-rights activist, he advocated for fair employment and housing for Blacks.
The Miss Sepia International Pageant was a unique feature added to the celebrations in Windsor. This beauty and talent competition, introduced in 1931, provided a platform for young African-Canadian women who otherwise would not receive such an opportunity. In the early twentieth century women of African descent were banned from entering mainstream pageants and women of colour were hardly ever featured in magazine or television advertisements. Contestants were judged on the basis of evening gowns, swimwear, and talent competitions. In addition to the honour of being crowned Miss Sepia, winners also received prizes in the form of cash, a trophy, and flowers. Local and American contestants took great pride