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A Past Denied
The Invisible History of Slavery in
Canada
By
Mike Barber
History is not the past, it is how we recount the past.
A Past, Denied: The
Invisible History of Slavery in Canada is a
feature-length documentary by independent filmmaker
Mike Barber.
The film, which is currently in production, explores how
a false sense of history—both taught in the classroom
and repeated throughout our national historical
narrative—impinges on the present. It examines how 200
years of institutional slavery during Canada’s formation
has been kept out of
Canadian
classrooms, textbooks and social consciousness.
The
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade effectively started in
1444 when Portuguese pirates, operating under the
auspices of
Prince Henrique, kidnapped 235 Africans from a
village near the mouth of the
Senegal River and brought them back to
Portugal
where they were sold as slaves. From that point forward,
over 15,000,000 Africans would be forcibly removed from
their homeland and sold into slavery in Europe and the
Americas; over 30,000,000 others would die in slave
wars, work camps, or during transit aboard slave ships
until the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade ended in the 1860s.
Today in
North America, the use of African slave labour is
seen as a uniquely
American institution.
Canada
is reputed as being the
Promised Land to the North to where slaves could
escape and live as free men and women. The
Underground Railroad is our claim to fame, and we
toot that horn proudly. Our history textbooks—and much
less, our national historical narrative—rarely, if ever
mention the two centuries of institutionalized slavery
and its role in the founding of Canada.
The version of
history taught in Canadian schools tends to serve the
interests of nationalist pride rather than education.
Figures such as
René Bourassa, Colin McNabb,
Joseph Papineau and
Peter Russell have been made into historical icons,
honoured in our texts and on our landscape. All were
slave owners and some were rabid advocates of slavery,
though today one would never know it. Among the
multitude of authoritative biographies on such founding
figures, these facts have a tendency to escape any
mention, either because the authors chose not to include
these facts or because they simply were not aware.
Whether this act of censorship is intentional or not the
error is compounded, the cycle of ignorance is
perpetuated.
History Matters
The subtle
underlying message this selective and filtered history
conveys is one of white superiority. When students are
taught that it is only white people who tend to do
anything of historical importance it effectively
instills them with a “white people belong on top, people
of colour belong on the bottom” outlook on the world.
Fed the same false sense of history, white students feel
good about their heritage at the expense of non-white
students who feel alienated to the point that they begin
to tune out. According to figures from the
Toronto District School Board, by age 16 more than
half of black male teens are at risk of dropping out. In
Montréal, the dropout rate among black youth is an
estimated 48 per cent. The history curriculum is not
solely responsible for these alarming statistics, but it
is culpable.
There is a direct
cause-and-effect relationship with our collective past
and our collective present, as well as our collective
future. To fully understand the context of current
conflicts and events, we need to know the relevant past
and its causal relationship. In his book Lies
My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History
Textbook Got Wrong, historian and sociologist
James Loewen explains “slavery’s twin legacies” to
the present as “the social and economic inferiority it
conferred upon blacks and the cultural racism it
instilled in whites.” Both of which, he adds, “continue
to haunt our society.” Removing this substantial part of
our nation’s development from our historical narrative
is not just an academic or moral problem. It has
deprived and continues to deprive generations of the
ability to identify “the dynamic interplay between
slavery as a socioeconomic system and racism as an idea
system.”
The film will show
the connections between the practice of slavery in the
past with racial disparity, tensions, and racism in the
present. It will illustrate why telling history in a
neutral, accurate and more complete manner is vital to
understanding the causal relationship between past,
present and future. The overarching point being more
than just “history matters,” but rather honest history
matters.
Source:
PastDenied
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Africville apology is a
start, not an end
By
Mike Barber
Last week’s
apology by city of
Halifax Mayor Peter Kelly, for the evictions and
razing of the African-Canadian community of
Africville in
Nova
Scotia during the 1960s, marks a small but
significant moment in the history of slavery and racism
in Canada. The
official apology issued February 24, 2010, made on
behalf of Halifax Regional Council and
Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM), was accompanied
by terms of the 2005 agreement reached between the
municipality and the
Africville Genealogy Society, which, along with a
formal acknowledgment of loss, included:
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—$3 million (CAN) contributed towards
the reconstruction of the Seaview United
Baptist Church which will serve as a
memorial to Africville;
—2.5 acres of land at
Seaview Park to be provided to the
Africville Heritage Trust Board;
—a park maintenance agreement to be
established between Africville Heritage
Trust and HRM for the lands known as Seaview
Park;
—and, the establishment of an
African-Nova Scotian Affairs function within
HRM |
Roots in slavery and war
Africville’s roots
go far back to the
American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) when
approximately 3,500
Black Loyalists (free or former enslaved
African-Americans who escaped to the British side of the
conflict) migrated to Nova Scotia, many of whom fought
for the British in return for the promise that they
would not be allowed to be enslaved.
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Slaveholding
Anglo-American Loyalists also migrated
to
Nova Scotia bringing with them about
2,500 enslaved African-Americans. But unlike
their free counterparts, these
African-Americans remained enslaved until
the practice of slavery was abolished
throughout the British Empire in
1834—meaning, for a few decades, Nova Scotia
simultaneously had two distinct Black
populations: one whose freedom was
protected, and the other whose enslavement
was sanctioned.
The
Black Loyalists had been promised free
land and equality, however these—not unlike
other
broken promises and treaties made to First
Nations by the Crown—were never kept.
The area on the southern shore of the
Bedford Basin began being settled after
the
Anglo-American War of 1812, though it
was never established as an official,
incorporated community. |
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Industrialization
soon began to encroach on the small but hitherto
self-sustaining community as railway after railway
started running through the area. Other facilities
unwanted by white communities—a prison, slaughterhouse,
an infectious disease hospital, and depository for fecal
waste—were located in and around
Africville.
Systemic abuse and neglect
Racial inequality
kept
Africville in an impoverished state. Job
opportunities were mostly limited to working as seamen,
porters or domestic workers. Education was severely
deficient amongst
Africville residents, who only had four boys and one
girl reach the 10th grade out of 140 children that ever
registered in the school. Despite paying city taxes, the
residents of
Africville went without the basic amenities other
towns enjoyed such as proper roads, electricity, health
services, or sewage. Even running water was not made av
ailable; residents of
Africville had to rely on an assortment of wells,
the water from which required boiling before drinking or
cooking.
While other parts
of the
City of Halifax, which had amalgamated
Africville, was receiving investments for
modernization efforts, the racially isolated community
of Africville was left to ruin. The final result of 150
years of unequal opportunity, municipal neglect and
institutionalized racism was
Africville being literally reduced to a slum; a
label it officially gained in 1958 after
Halifax moved the town dump to the area. In 1962,
Halifax City Council decided to expropriate the land and
remove the “blighted housing and dilapidated structures”
in the interest of “urban renewal.”
Eviction and destruction
Between 1964 and
1967, residents were removed and placed in public
housing projects; those who were previously homeowners
became renters.
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Despite their
relocation, Africvillians still faced the
same problems of inequality and poverty.
Social programs that had previously been
promised never materialized. The
City of Halifax lent their assistance to
the people of Africville in such a manner
that perfectly illustrates the attitude with
which City Hall regarded them: they moved
the residents of Africville with the city’s
dump trucks.
The
Africville community was razed to the
ground. The houses, school, and the Seaview
United Baptist Church—which played an
integral role in the social life of the
community—were bulldozed to make way for
development of the north shore of the
Bedford Basin and the A. Murray MacKay
Bridge, which crosses the Halifax harbour.
Rear view of Seaview African
United Baptist Church, with
Africville
houses and laundry flapping in the breeze in
the foreground. |
Due to the
controversy surrounding the events, commercial
development did not take place and the waterfront was
left intact. In the 1980s, Halifax created Seaview
Memorial Park on the old Africville site, which was
declared a national historic site in 2002.
Reaction to the apology
Reactions to the apology from former residents and their
descendants have been mixed. Most were optimistic and
hopeful for the future; former Africville resident
Brenda Steed-Ross, who was evicted along with
her parents and her infant daughter when she was 18,
said she feels “we’re moving forward, not backward.”
Rev. Rhonda Britten, a leader within the Black community
in Nova Scotia, welcomed the settlement, saying “I know
that there are some among us who are wounded, and some
among us who bear those scars. But, in spite of all of
that, the victory has been won.”
Rev. Rhonda Y. Britton, Cornwallis Street Baptist
Church—"Wha'd
Ya Expect?"
However, not
everyone shared Rev. Britten’s optimism. According to a
report from
CBC News, while most of the crowd offered cheers,
there were others voicing dissent, shouting: “Not
enough.” Some of the descendants of Africville claimed
the settlement was illegal because the
Africville Genealogy Society (AGS) didn’t have the
right to negotiate on their behalf. One criticism of the
agreement is that there is no provision for individual
compensation.
Eddie Carvey, whose brother Irvine is president of
AGS, has been actively raising the issue and protesting
since 1994. Along with individual reparations (a word
the Canadian press has decidedly avoided using, which I
will not),
Carvey is also seeking a public inquiry and for the
city to return ownership of
Africville to its former residents and descendants.
There are apologies and there
are apologies
In the interest of
reconciliation and restorative justice, formal apologies
are more than just gestures; they are vital to building
trust between those who have been harmed and those who
committed the harm (including the descendants of both
sides). They are not to be confused with the actual work
to be done to achieve reconciliation and restorative
justice, but they are important to begin with. After
all, if you can’t start with “I’m sorry,” then what else
can you really say that will have any meaning?
For an apology to
be a catalyst, it needs to have weight; for an apology
to have any weight, it needs to be sincere. But, what if
it is incomplete? I do not wish to challenge the
sincerity of anyone involved, but I do want to draw
attention to the history I have outlined above and the
content of the apology below. I want to ask: is it
complete?
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On behalf of the
Halifax Regional Municipality,
I apologize to the former
Africville residents and
their descendants for what they
have endured for almost 50
years, ever since the loss of
their community that had stood
on the shores of Bedford Basin
for more than 150 years.
You lost your houses, your
church, all of the places where
you gathered with family and
friends to mark the milestones
of your lives.
For all that, we apologize.
We apologize to the community
elders, including those who did
not live to see this day, for
the pain and loss of dignity you
experienced. |
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We
apologize to the generations who followed,
for the deep wounds you have inherited and
the way your lives were disrupted by the
disappearance of your community.
We
apologize for the heartache experienced at
the loss of the
Seaview United Baptist Church, the
spiritual heart of the community, removed in
the middle of the night. We acknowledge the
tremendous importance the church had, both
for the congregation and the community as a
whole.
We
realize words cannot undo what has been
done, but we are profoundly sorry and
apologize to all the former residents and
their descendants.
The
repercussions of what happened in
Africville linger to this day. They
haunt us in the form of lost opportunities
for young people who were never nurtured in
the rich traditions, culture and heritage of
Africville.
They
play out in lingering feelings of hurt and
distrust, emotions that this municipality
continues to work hard with the African Nova
Scotian community to overcome.
For all
the distressing consequences, we apologize.
Our
history cannot be rewritten but, thankfully,
the future is a blank page and, starting
today, we hold the pen with which we can
write a shared tomorrow.
It is in that spirit of
respect and reconciliation that we ask your
forgiveness.
Source:
HalifaxAfricvilleApology
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Amongst the
recognition that people have suffered and continue to
suffer due to wrongdoing on the part of the city
council, what are the reasons being given in the formal
apology? They acknowledge loss of their houses, loss of
their church, and that repercussions “linger to this
day”—and this is important to acknowledge. Their loss is
tremendous and it is real, and the repercussions
continue to manifest 50 years later. But two parts of
the apology trouble me, leading me to believe that the
greatest loss has been widely overlooked.
For what, exactly?
When they
“apologize to the generations who followed” and lament
the “lost opportunities for young people who were never
nurtured in the rich traditions, culture and heritage of
Africville,” flags go up. First question: the
generations who followed what? The evictions and
bulldozing of homes? Second question: which
opportunities do Mayor Kelly, Halifax Regional Council
and Halifax Regional Municipality think the young people
living in
Africville have lost? Their use of the words
“nurtured” and “rich” have a certain ironic flair
considering
Africville was in shambles, with no health services,
sewage or running water. Why no apology for that?
Failure by design
On April 26, 1965,
the Mail-Star newspaper
quoted the Welfare Director saying “the City has
fallen down on its responsibility to
Africville.
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Providing proper water
and sewerage [sic] facilities for these
people, when needed, would have enabled them
to give as good an account of themselves as
any other families in the area and would
make relocation unnecessary.” It is
important to keep in mind that
Africville becoming a slum was not the
making of its residents. External forces
played an active role in forcing the
community onto a path to destruction.
The high level of poverty
and low levels of education were perpetuated
by racism towards the African-Canadian
community.
Africville residents paid city taxes but
were deprived of the basics that other
communities enjoyed, which speaks to
institutionalized racism. The
slaughterhouse, infectious disease hospital
and fecal waste depository were placed in
the Africville area because white
communities didn’t want them in theirs—and
that speaks to
environmental racism. |
From the broken
promises of the Crown to the city dump being placed at
its doorstep,
Africville was practically doomed from the
beginning. Despite the unfair hardship its residents
were subjected to, they still bonded together and made
for themselves a community. When that community finally
became an eyesore or an inconvenience—depending whose
story you believe—to the Halifax city council, they
capriciously tore it asunder.
I bring up the
inconvenience aspect because there are a few facts that
have slipped by many of the newspaper articles writing
about the razing of
Africville. The Civic Planning Commission
recommended the removal of the residents of
Africville to make way for development of a
residential, park and shopping centre complex
as early as 1945. Two years after that, the Halifax
City Council approved the designation of
Africville as industrial land. In 1948, the Council
approved the borrowing of funds in order to provide
water and sewer services, but these services were never
installed—the residents were left to use well water that
became contaminated by the railway and surrounding
industrial waste.
Africville was a Black neighbourhood on waterfront
property, and at least 17 years before the evictions
started, the city of Halifax was looking to oust its
residents and usurp their land. The Council’s avarice
and willful disregard for the people of
Africville are not at all, in my opinion, addressed
in the words or spirit of this apology. It is very hard
to work on restorative justice when the full weight of
the offence has not been accounted.
A Canadian pathology
It’s not all that
shocking that even while issuing a formal apology as an
act towards reconciliation, a government body would
avoid the larger and much uglier issues at the very
heart of what it is they are apologizing for.
| It’s also not surprising that the
government kept “individual compensation”
off the table, because Canada doesn’t like
“the R-word” any more than the US does. For
Canada, the subject is even more intractable
because a discussion about reparations can’t
happen without a discussion about slavery,
and we as a country do our best to avoid
that topic altogether—unless it’s about
slavery in the US and how Canada was part of
the underground railroad; we love to talk
about that slavery. In the end, the
apology as it stands is still a sign of
modest progress. Many claim it isn’t enough,
and I agree with them. The $3 million
towards reconstruction of the Seaview United
Baptist Church, the 2.5 acres of land to be
provided to the Africville Heritage Trust
Board, and the establishment of an
African-Nova Scotian Affairs function within
HRM is still a fair start, but the ball
really needs to keep rolling.
Overview
of
Africville |
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As a recent
(though extremely rare)
crossburning
in Poplar Grove—a town about 65 km (40 mi) northwest
from the Africville site—demonstrates, the province of
Nova Scotia is still not without its own racial
problems—even
within the HRM itself.
I’m glad that
Brenda Steed-Ross and others are finding some peace from
the apology and agreement. I hope Eddie Carvey gets the
public inquiry he is looking for. I also hope Mayor
Kelly and the Halifax City Council wake up and realize
that it is more than the “repercussions of what happened
in Africville” that “linger to this day.” The deeper
issues at the heart of the Africville affair—racism,
both systemic and environmental—are still haunting them.
And unless they decide to seriously address these
issues, there will be no lessons learned from Africville.
Source:
PastDeniedAfricville
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Mike Barber is an
independent filmmaker with a particular
interest in issues surrounding social
justice. He is currently directing
A Past, Denied: The
Invisible History of Slavery in Canada, a
feature documentary exploring how a false
sense of history—both taught in the
classroom and repeated throughout the
national historical narrative—impinges on
the present. It examines how 200 years of
institutional slavery during Canada’s
formation has been kept out of Canadian
classrooms, textbooks and social
consciousness. He is currently based in
Toronto, Ontario.
Source:
PastDenied
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Capitalism and the Ideal State:
Marcus Garvey / Negroes and the Crisis of Capitalism
(Du Bois) /
Economic Emancipation
of Africa
Liberty and Empire
/
Money is Speech
/
On Capitalism:
Noam Chomsky
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Africville deal nets millions
Bob
Brooks' Photographic Portrait of Africville in the 1960s
Africville Memorial Project: Significant Dates
/
Africville Timeline
Roots of Alientation /
The Early 20th Century /
1962—A Pivitol Year
Ramp Up for Tear Dow /
Settled Estates /
Tear Down and After Effects
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From the Heart of Black Nova Scotia
By
Tambay, on March 16th, 2011
Directed by Sylvia
Hamilton, the 30-minute film takes a look at the lives
of a group of black students in their predominantly
white high school in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the daily
reminders of racism they face, ranging from abuse, to
exclusion.They work to establish a Cultural Awareness
Youth Group, a vehicle for building pride and
self-esteem through educational and cultural programs.
With help from mentors, they discover the richness of
their heritage and learn some of the ways they can begin
to affect change.
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The Hanging of Angelique
The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the
Burning of Old Montreal
By
Afua Cooper
Cooper's telling of Angélique's story is a
series of intricate movements between
historical context and the life of Angélique
herself. Though details are occasionally
repeated, Cooper's attempt to explain
Angélique, her time, and her place is
largely successful. There are as many
questions as there are answers about
Angélique, including the question of whether
or not she set the fire that devastated the
city, and this part of what makes the story
so compelling and important. After Angélique
was tried, the prosecutor appealed the
vicious sentence. This was a peculiar move
(as Cooper notes: "It was he, as king's
prosecutor, who had diligently and
determinedly amassed the evidence against
Angélique") but it won Angélique a new
sentence: torture and then death by hanging.
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Under the torture,
Angélique confessed. Cooper and Clarke both
believe Angélique was guilty. Some
portrayals, fictional and factual, of
Angélique have attributed her actions to
love, describing the arson as an act that
would enable her to run off with her lover.
Cooper asserts that this storytelling
technique diminishes Angélique:
By emphasizing love as
Angelique's primary motive, these writers
not only rob her of the agency that she
exhibited in her quest for liberty, they
also diminish the violence inherent in
slavery. For them, Angelique did not flee
because she found her enslavement
humiliating, awful, and suffocating; she
fled because she was 'in love.' If we take
this reasoning one step further, it is easy
to conclude that slavery could not have been
so bad. I believe that the 'in love' thesis
advanced by these authors speaks to their
unease with the race, gender, and power
relations intrinsic to slavery. |
It is an uneasiness
that seems to permeate Canadian history, and Cooper is
to be credited for drawing attention to it, for digging
it out of history's landfill. The Hanging of Angélique
is a book with an edge, an agenda, and that is to draw
attention to a neglected area of Canada's past.
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In my engagement with
African Canadian history, I have come to
realize that Black history has less to do
with Black people and more with White pride.
If Black history narratives make Whites feel
good, it is allowed to surface; if not, it
is suppressed or buried. That is why slavery
has been erased from the collective
unconsciousness. It is about an ignoble and
unsavoury past, and because it cast Whites
in a "bad" light, they as chroniclers of the
country's past, creators and keepers of its
traditions and myths, banished this past
into the dustbins of history. |
The Hanging of Angélique can't give back what
was taken from Angélique—her name, her freedom—but it
can demand that we, at least retroactively, bear
witness. That we see her for what she is, her life for
what it was, and our country for its moments of shame,
as well as pride. We can't give Angélique her name, but
we can name what happened to her and make her part of
our collective memory. Even if remembering her took 270
years.—BlogCritics
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Lies My Teacher Told Me
Everything Your American History Textbook
Got Wrong
By
James W. Loewen
Winner
of the American Book Award and the Oliver C.
Cox Anti-Racism Award of The American
Sociological Association—Americans have lost
touch with their history, and in
Lies My Teacher Told Me Professor
James Loewen shows why. After surveying
eighteen leading high school American
history texts, he has concluded that not one
does a decent job of making history
interesting or memorable. Marred by an
embarrassing combination of blind
patriotism, mindless optimism, sheer
misinformation, and outright lies, these
books omit almost all the ambiguity,
passion, conflict, and drama from our past.
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In this revised
edition, packed with updated material, Loewen explores
how historical myths continue to be perpetuated in
today's climate and adds an eye-opening chapter on the
lies surrounding 9/11 and the Iraq War. From the truth
about Columbus's historic voyages to an honest
evaluation of our national leaders, Loewen revives our
history, restoring the vitality and relevance it truly
possesses. Thought provoking, nonpartisan, and often
shocking, Loewen unveils the real America in this
iconoclastic classic beloved by high school teachers,
history buffs, and enlightened citizens across the
country.
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The Oriental Question
Consolidating a White Man’s
Province, 1914-41
By Patricia E. Roy
The sequel to her 1989
groundbreaking work,
A White Man’s Province: British
Columbia Politicians and Chinese and
Japanese Immigrants, 1858-1914,
Patricia E. Roy’s latest book,
The Oriental Question: Consolidating
a White Man’s Province, 1914-41
continues her study into why British
Columbians—and many Canadians from
outside the province—were
historically so opposed to Asian
immigration. Drawing on contemporary
press and government reports, as
well as the correspondence and
memoirs of individuals, Roy shows
how, from 1914 to 1941, British
Columbians consolidated a "white
man’s province" by securing a
virtual end to Asian immigration and
placing stringent legal restrictions
on Asian competition in the major
industries of lumber and fishing.
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While its
emphasis is on political action and politicians, the
book also examines the popular pressure for such
practices and gives some attention to the reactions
of those most affected: the province’s Chinese and
Japanese residents.
The Oriental Question is a critical
investigation of a troubling period in Canadian
history. It will be of vital interest to scholars of
British Columbian and Canadian history and politics,
Asian studies, diaspora, ethnicity, and immigration.
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
posted 3 January 2011
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