took measures to secure and exercise their freedoms and rights. African-Canadian troops protected Upper Canada at Fort Malden against American attack during the War of 1812 and the Mackenzie Rebellions in 1837 and 1838. American expansion into Canada, for them, would almost certainly mean a return to slavery.
The development of religious, cultural, and social institutions was central to the survival and success of local Black citizens. A British Methodist Episcopal (BME) church was established in Malden in 1839. The First Baptist congregation, formed around 1840, constructed a church on George Street in 1845–49, and the Nazrey American Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church was established in 1848. These churches also functioned as schools, which was equally important to the community as the local common schools2 had been segregated since the 1840s and the demand for education by children and adults was steadily increasing. With regards to Black and White children attending common schools, the prevailing sentiment in the Amherstburg area was that “Local trustees would cut their children’s heads off and throw them across the roadside ditch before they would let them go to school with niggers!”3 The school board built the King Street School for African-Canadian students in 1864. It remained segregated until 1912.
Amherstburg was an epicentre of anti-slavery activity carried out by both Blacks and Whites. The Black churches passed anti-slavery resolutions at annual conferences and even joined the Canadian Anti-Slavery Baptist Association, headquartered in Amherstburg. Captain Charles Stuart, a White abolitionist mentioned earlier, helped many of the almost two hundred escapees who arrived between 1817 and 1822 to settle on small plots of land while he lived in Amherstburg. He received a large land grant in the northeastern section of the town for this reason. Presbyterian minister Isaac Rice of the American Missionary Association (AMA) began working among the fugitives in Amherstburg in 1838, giving out clothes and food and running a mission-funded school. Levi Coffin, the Quaker often referred to as “president” of the Underground Railroad, visited Amherstburg in 1844.4 He stayed with Rice while he toured the province to see how fugitives, some of whom he assisted, were adjusting to a free life.
In 1854, members of the Black community in Amherstburg created the True Band Society to combat discrimination. The group encouraged self-help and community building through economic development and education, and provided financial support for refugees. They promoted unity among Black churches, as well as political involvement and integration throughout the dispersed settlement. The parent group of the fourteen chapters in Canada West, which consisted of six hundred members, later moved to Malden. As well, a number of fraternal organizations were based in Amherstburg in the middle of the nineteenth century. This included societies such as the Prince Hall Masonic Order and the Lincoln Lodge No. 8 F. & A.M., one of the oldest Black Masonic lodges in Canada.5 Although Blacks in Amherstburg experienced some degree of equality until the 1840s, the arrival of the Irish and other European immigrants resulted in some displacement of African Canadians and an increase in racial prejudice. These fraternal institutions and the Emancipation Day gatherings endeavoured to heighten awareness of these injustices and to eradicate them over time.
According to Dr. Daniel Pearson, a native of Amherstburg, the recognition of Emancipation Day in Amherstburg began in 1834.6 Given the long history of Africans in the region, it is indeed likely that observances of the abolition of slavery occurred from the inception of Abolition in the British Empire. It was customary, each first of August, for Amherstburg’s Black residents to march down to the docks to receive and welcome one thousand or more guests coming over the river from Detroit and from Windsor. People also came from nearby Colchester, Kingsville, and Sandwich, as well as from more distant areas of the province and the United States. With Sandwich, Windsor, and Malden a fairly short distance away, commemorations periodically alternated among these towns or were split between locations. For example, Malden was the selected location for the 1852 Emancipation Day celebrations in Essex County. In 1875, the day program was held at Walkers Grove near Windsor and in the evening a soiree was held at the Amherstburg Town Hall under the auspices of the local Black Order of Oddfellows. Then, in 1876, Emancipation Day activities occurred at Prince’s Grove in Sandwich.7
Delos Rogest Davis faced discrimination on his path to becoming a lawyer. Like all law students, he was required to article with a practising lawyer for a period of time before taking the entrance exams for admission to the Ontario bar, but for eleven years no White lawyer would hire Davis. He appealed to the Ontario Legislature in 1884 to ask the Supreme Court of Judicature to grant him admission to the Ontario bar providing he pass the exams and pay the required fee. His appeal was granted, and on May 19, 1885, Delos Davis was admitted to the Law Society of Upper Canada.
About two thousand individuals assembled in Amherstburg in 1877 to celebrate the abolition of slavery. The procession was accompanied by the Amherstburg Cornet Band and led by the mounted marshals Daniel “Doc” Pearson and Mr. J.O. Johnson to the docks to greet American guests arriving by steamer. The marchers continued through the town to Caldwell’s Grove8 to enjoy an outdoor lunch and hear uplifting speeches. A dance was held in the evening at the Sons of Temperance Hall on Ramsay Street in the old building of the newspaper, the Amherstburg Echo, located across from present-day Duby’s furniture store.
Caldwell’s Grove was the site for the forty-fifth anniversary of the Emancipation Act. In 1879 Daniel Pearson of Amherstburg was appointed the chairman. Over three thousand gatherers paraded through the principal streets of the town and then went to the grove for a picnic lunch, games, dancing, and the anticipated speeches. The first speaker was lawyer Delos Rogest Davis,9 the son of a former slave. He had grown up in Colchester about twenty kilometres south of Amherstburg. Davis stated that all present should be grateful to be able to assemble on free soil and supported his statement with a legal perspective, saying that any infringements of rights should be blamed on the perpetrator because the laws of Canada did not discriminate. He then went on to identify areas of existing racial discrimination that included denial of access to a good education, of the right to serve in the military, and the right to sit on juries. Davis encouraged African Canadians to demand equality and fair treatment. Other addresses were given by John Richards from Detroit; Mr. Lewis of Toledo, Ohio; and Michael Twomey, the mayor of Amherstburg. An evening program was held at the local BME church to raise money for the church, followed by a dance at the Sons of Temperance Hall.10
In 1889, several August First celebrations took place in Essex County, at Central Grove — close to Harrow, Sandwich, Windsor, Chatham, Detroit — and at Amherstburg. Once again, lawyer Delos Davis presided over the day’s event in Amherstburg. The recurring theme of the addresses delivered that day was the importance of education. Reverend Josephus O’Banyoun11 encouraged listeners to “educate their children,” Reverend J.S. Masterson of Windsor argued that “education … was the only way to be able to march on,”12 and Dr. James Brien, Member of Parliament, stated that “the earnest pursuit of education would enable them to take advantage of all opportunities for advancement both moral and material.”13 More messages came from Gore Atkin, a farmer and former warden of Essex County, who pointed out the benefits of knowledge in the abolition movement, because first “the English people were not then ready for it. The people had to be educated to a measure of this kind….”14 Reverend Mr. Williams from North Carolina, a child of formerly enslaved parents, said that Blacks “in his State, they had forty institutions of learning, yearly sending out 240 thoroughly educated pupils.” He further advised the crowd to “love morality education and religion and always look well to the future.”15 Reverend E. North of Colchester South pointed out “the power of education to remove prejudices against their race, as it elevated them in all relations of life and qualified them to fill any position in the land.”16 Lastly, the member of the provincial parliament, W.D. Balfour, remarked that African Canadians “were also being recognized in Government appointments in the country as well as at the seats of Government, and were educating themselves up to the requirements of these positions” and concluded the program “by urging
