Emancipation Day. Natasha L. Henry

       by Afua Cooper

      On August 1, 1851, Black Canadians in Sandwich (now a suburb of Windsor), Canada West,¹ and their allies commemorated Emancipation Day. Festivities included speeches, musical and cultural performances, and a dinner. The initiative was led by Henry and Mary Bibb, a Black abolitionist couple who had become leaders in the Black communities of the province, and who had founded the Voice of the Fugitive, Canada’s first Black newspaper. Here is how an article published in the Voice described the event:

      The friends of freedom in Sandwich will celebrate the abolition of chattel slavery in the British West Indies, in A.D. 1837 at the Stone Barracks where there will be speaking, singing, etc.² Several distinguished speakers from abroad are expected, among whom are Samuel R. Ward, of Boston, Mr. Johnson, of Ohio, J.J. Fisher of Toronto, George Cary, of Dawn Mills. A general Invitation is hereby extended to all persons friendly to the cause.

      Dinner will be furnished by the ladies for twenty-five cents per ticket. Refreshments may be had during the day and supper in the evening. The proceeds will be appropriated towards erecting a Baptist church.

      It was Mary Bibb, a publisher in her own right, who wrote the article. She also listed her name and the names of several women who were part of the women’s Emancipation Day Committee. On that day in 1851, the Bibbs were continuing the tradition of Emancipation Day celebrations and the renewal of the Black community spirit through such commemorations. It is instructive to note that the Bibbs and the rest of the community had a specific objective for the use of the funds garnered from the celebrations, and that was to concretely aid in the development of the Black community through the building of a church. That objective was realized in the founding and erecting of the First Baptist Church, which is still in operation today.

      West Indian Emancipation Day, or August First as it was popularly referred to, has been celebrated by African Canadians since 1834 when the British Parliament passed the Act a year earlier to free all the enslaved Africans in the overseas slave colonies. Some slave colonies like Barbados and Antigua received complete emancipation in 1834, while others, like Jamaica and British Guiana, had to wait for a period of “apprenticeship” between 1834 to 1837–38 when they were granted full freedom. Nonetheless, the Act and the subsequent freeing of the enslaved people were momentous events because close to one million Africans who were held in bondage in the British overseas colonies, mainly in the West Indies, were freed. The Emancipation Act was a milestone in the annals of Black freedom not only in the Americas but globally as well.

      Canada was part of the British Empire, and though it was not a slave society as we understand it, it was a society with slaves. Africans had been enslaved in Canada since 1628 and though the institution declined significantly by the 1820s, there were still enslaved people in the colonies who were freed by the Emancipation Act. On the other hand, in the United States slavery had grown by leaps and bounds by the time of British Emancipation. Therefore, the end of slavery in Canada made this country the only genuine free soil on the continent. The creators of August First celebrations were African Americans who had migrated to Canada during the first part of the nineteenth century in their quest for a free life.

      These African Americans, runaway slaves and free persons, first began arriving in Canada after the War of 1812. They came as war refugees from the Chesapeake Region to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Later, other immigrants, mainly associated with the Underground Railroad experience, started coming primarily to the provinces of Ontario and Quebec after 1818.³ Likewise, beginning in 1858 a stream of Black immigrants from California made an exodus to British Columbia. It is these Blacks who collectively began to memorialize August First. The reason for this is threefold. First, these Canadians were grateful to the British Crown for providing them with refuge and the opportunity to build new lives in Canada. Second, these Africans were abolitionists who made it their life’s work to fight for the end of slavery in the United States, and saw the commemoration of “British freedom” as one way to signal to the slaveholding American Republic their intention. Finally, their commemoration of August First was an exercise in solidarity with Black Caribbean people in their struggle and success to win emancipation for themselves and their communities. The August First event marked the internationalization of the Black freedom struggle and the awareness of Black Canadians that “we are our brothers and sisters keeper.”

      The Emancipation Act is usually seen as a manifestation of British philanthropy, and as a “handing down of freedom” to disenfranchised Blacks. But this is only a partial truth. Black enslaved Caribbean people had fought in diverse ways for their freedom. The Haitian Revolution sheds much light on this. In this instance, enslaved Africans in Haiti fought a thirteen-year war with France (and also Britain and Spain) for their freedom. The Haitians won. Their victory sent a shock wave throughout the world especially to the slaveholding empires.

      It was felt by many in the political elite in Britain that it was best to avoid another Haiti in the British colonies by abolishing slavery by peaceful means. However, like the Haitians, the enslaved people in the British Caribbean had been engaged in a long struggle for their freedom. Ever since Britain became a colonizing and slave power in the Caribbean, enslaved Africans have led numerous rebellions and revolts against British slaveholding and colonial rule. Historian Michael Craton has noted that British rule in the Caribbean can be seen as a protracted 250-year war between the colonizing slaveholders and the enslaved Africans.⁴ In Jamaica, for example, in 1831 a slave revolt convulsed the island. In December of that year the “Baptist War” as it was called (because so many of the leaders were Baptist deacons) was started by the enslaved masses in their desire to throw off slavery and its attendant dehumanization.

      The British Army and government responded ferociously. They hanged at least four hundred freedom fighters and put the country under martial law. Alarmed by the desire and intention of enslaved Blacks to free themselves, less than two years later, the British proclaimed West Indian Emancipation. The point is that enslaved Africans themselves had agency and exercised that agency in their quest to be the architects of their own lives and freedom. But in a Eurocentric interpretation of the Emancipation Act, it is the British government that has received the full credit for “giving freedom to the Blacks.” While I am not discounting the significant work done by the British Anti-slavery Movement and of such stalwarts like Granville Sharpe, I must point out that when the British passed the Emancipation Act they were well aware that the Caribbean enslaved masses had begun the struggle for their own freedom long