Negro builders of

British Columbia

Pea 1

T was a bright day in <April,

1858, and the citizens of boom
town San Francisco crowded down
to the docks to see the first three
ships leaving for the new gold
rush on the Fraser River. Among
the spectators were a large num-
ber of the Negro community of
the California city. They had
come to wish bon voyage to 65
Negro men who were travelling
on the steamer Commodore to
Victoria on Vancouver Island to
take a new home for themselves.

These 65 pioneers were the ad-
vance guard of some 300-400 Ne-
groes who settled in Victoria and
in the camps along the mining
ereeks of the Fraser River and
Cariboo.

The story of these Negro build-
ers of B.C. has been forgotten
and only the painstaking research
of an interested scholar has piec-
ed it together. In his unpublished
thesis on “Negro Settlement in
British Columbia,” James Pilton
has done much to rectify the
neglect by bourgedis historians
of the contribution made by Ne-
gro settlers to the growth of our
province.

The Negro. pioneers did not
come to Vancouver Island and
British Columbia primarily to
bunt for gold although many of
them did become miners—they

came to escape from oppression

in the land of their birth.

The Negroes of San Francisco
wanted to escape from the harsh
discrimination against them and
to live as free men with equal
rights but the shadow of slavery
in the United States prevented
them from doing so.

In the 1850's. the struggle
against slavery was drawing near
its bloody climax in the American
Civil War. The slaveholders were
still desperately trying to- pre-
serve their system through their
dominant position in U.S. politics.
They tightened up laws compell-
ing the return of escaped slaves
fo try and stop the drain through
the underground railroad to free-
dom. They got a favorable de-
cision from the courts which gave
them a- legal basis to extend
slavery into the new territories
in the West.

California was a iree state and ©

any slave brought there became
free but the pro-slavery minority
was constantly trying to worsen
the position of the Negroes in
he state.”

UE TEE TE Tee Et]

During 1857 and 1858, a new

series of blows were aimed at-

the California Negroes. :
In the famous case of Archy

Lee, a Southern slaveowner tried
with the connivance of pro-slav-
ery State officials to kidnap and
return to Mississippi his former
slave who had become free in
California.

At the same time, a Bill was in-
troduced in*the California legis-
lature to drive all Negroes out of
the State, and allowing the auth-
orities to work them as slaves to
pay for the cost of their ex-
pulsion.

These two acts convinc@d many
of the Negroes that they could
no longer look for’ protection to
the California government. And
the expulsion of their children
from the San Francisco public
schools was also a factor in
pushing them to emigrate.

The San Francisco community
decided on Vancouver Island after
a warm invitation from James
Douglas, goyernor of the infant
colony of Vancouver Island and
ead of the all-powerful Hudson’s
Bay Company which controlled its
economy.

Douglas wanted permanent set-
tiers and laborers to replace his
cwn men already being attracted
by the first stirrings of the gold
rush. In addition he was part
Negro, son of a Scottish father
and. a West Indian mother and
felt that the migrants. would,
like himself, have better oppor-
tunities under the more liberal
rule of Britain.

&B ;

In their new homes in Victoria
the Negroes were a considerable
proportion of the population and
they played an active part in

_ the city’s economic, political and

social life. 7

Two Negro partners, Peter Les-
ter and Mifflin Gibbs, opened the
first large mercantile business
outside the Hundson’s Bay Com-
pany monopoly. They became
substantial citizens and Gibbs
later built the store in which the
great British Columbia depart-
ment store chain of David See
cer got its start.

As early comers during the
gold rush *boom, some Negroes
were able to buy up and re-sell
town lots at a nice profit. Others

made substantial amounts from
the houses they built. .

But not all Negroes were weti-
to-do. Their numbers included
people who worked at all types.of
occupations. Besides merchants,
there were bakers, barbers, car-
penters, draymen and laborers.

Negroes were Victoria’s first
police force, being appointed by
Governor Douglas for a_ short
period in the summer of 1858.

The first volunteer militia unit
on the British Pacific Coast was
the Victoria Pioneer Rifle Corps
formed by the members of the
Negro community.

Mifflin Gibbs, ‘the first indepen-
dent merchant, became a city
alderman,
times to represent the town’s
swankiest residential district.

Jacob Francis, a British sub-
ject born in England, won a seat
in the Legislative Assembly of
Vancouver Island, but was. dis-
qualified on a. technicality.

Negroes joined in the struggle
for the introduction of demo-
cratic government into the auto-
eratically-governed colony of Van-
ecouver Island. After its union
with the mainland of B.C. in 1866,
they fought with the Reformers

to join B.C. to the Canadian Con- °

federation.

At the Yale convention in 1868,
where the banner of Responsible
Government and Union with Can-
ada was raised, the Negroes were
represented by Gibbs who was
elected by the predominantly
Negro farming settlement of Salt
Spring Island.

But in spite of their solid con-
tribution to the colony’s welfare,
the Negroes were not able to
escape discrimination. A series
of incidents took place, mostly at
the height of the American Civii
War, when pro-slavery Southern-
ers sparked a campaign against
the Negroes.

Negroes were refused entrance
to bars operated by American
residents, pressure was brought
to bear on theatre owners to re-
strict them to the gallery seats
and rowdies threw flour and jostl-
ed Negroes who insisted on sit-
ting where they pleased.

The Negro community fought
back—they stood on their rights
as citizens and refused to be segre-
gated. They attended the same
churches as other Victorians,
their children went to the same
schools and they kept up a run:

being elected three

w By KEITH RALSTON: 0+000sswnenereennnnevon vensnnninen ns

ning battle against attempts to
bar them socially.

In this they had the support
of the more sober element of the

city especially the Britishers who
prided themselves on their liber-

® The Victoria Pioneer Rifle

Corps drawn up in review or-
der as they were presented
with a silken Union Jack made
by the women of the Negro
community. The parade was
held in April 1864 when the
corps had been refused its
place of honor in the welcome
to the new Governor of Van-
couver Island, A. E. Kennedy.
The uniforms of the Rifle
Corps were green with orange
facings and white belts.

al tradition. But bias against
Negroes was not entirely absent
in governing circles and in high
society.

Negro citizens were left out of
the invitations to the farewell
banquet to Governor Douglas and
the Negro Rifle Corps was refus-
ed a place in the procession that
welcomed the new governor, A.
iu, Kennedy. But Kennedy refus-
ed to countenance such prejudice
having himself served on the
Gold Coast where he . reported
having had a Negro Chief Justice.

In the mining camps things
were different. Negro and white
miners worked side by side in
the mining “companies” where a
number of miners worked their
claims as partners.

One of the most famous. dis-
putes over mining claims involvy-
eds the Negro-white Dayis Com-
pany. When Judge Begbie decid-
ed the question in favor of the
rich and all-white Aurora Com-
pany, the miners along the Carl-
boo creeks held a protest meeting
to condemn his display of pre-
judice.

One rush to Leechtown near
Victoria was started when a Ne-
gro miner found a big nugget.

In the farming districts rela-
tions were also friendly. On Salt
Spring Island in the Gulf of
Georgia, Negro and white settlers
lived together in harmony.

SIR JAMES DOUGLAS
PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JULY 30, 1954 — PAGE 10