At the time this foreword is being written, we are living through a turbulent and potentially transformative moment in the history of Black presence in North America. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown...
Introduction
In the 1850s, a failure of the US justice system—the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision—disqualified native-born Black Americans from ever becoming citizens. Among the many results of that...
Author's Notes
A Note on LanguageTerms for persons of African heritage have changed over the decades. In the 1950s, a capital N on “Negro” was considered polite; a lowercase n was implicitly racist usage,...
Chapter One: “Free negroes and other obnoxious persons”
One day in the early 1850s, a familiar White customer entered the Clay Street Pioneer Shoe and Boot Emporium run by Peter Lester and Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, two of San Francisco’s most successful...
Chapter Two: “I think that the country is full of gold”
The land to which the Black Californians had been invited was one of the last parts of North America to feel the impact of European expansion. Lying north of the Columbia River, west of the Rocky...
Chapter Three: “A God-sent land for the colored people”
Forty years after the gold rush, Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken recalled an episode involving his father-in-law, James Douglas, and its aftermath:"He showed us a soda-water bottle half-full of scaly...
Chapter Four: “If you go in blind you will come out skinned”
Throughout the spring and summer of 1858, the Black emigrants left San Francisco. They were only a fraction of the adventurers travelling north; the new gold rush seemed to be depopulating the Bay...
Chapter Five: “Shall white men . . . rule in this Colony?”
Late in 1858, the mainland was proclaimed the crown colony of British Columbia. James Douglas was its first governor, but spent most of his time in Victoria, which still had the larger concentration...
Chapter Six: “They always want a little more liberty than white men”
At the end of the 1850s, James Douglas was the governor of two separate colonies in the Northwest. The mainland, under the HBC, had been New Caledonia; now, under the crown, it was British Columbia....
Chapter Seven: “A most orderly and useful and loyal section of the community”
For the most part, Victoria’s Black settlers spent little time and energy in battling prejudice and seeking justice. Like their White neighbours, they were busy making a living, getting ahead and...
Chapter Eight: “Have we any rights in common with white men?”
Late in June 1858, a canoe was found drifting down the Fraser River, not far from its mouth. In it was a Black man near death from seven stab wounds.He was the second cook of the small steamship Sea...
Chapter Nine: “They are the uncrowned kings”
Violent and dramatic events marked the settlement of Saltspring Island; Black people were involved in most of them. From our perspective they seem epic figures, enduring hardships and giving immense,...
Chapter Ten: “The war of complexional distinction is upon us”
“Rotten egged.—A Negro forced his way into the parquette of the Colonial Theatre last evening, and was pelted with rotten eggs by some men in the gallery. Several white people were also struck by...
Chapter Eleven: “The world is my country . . .”
In July 1865, Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, paid a visit to Victoria. During his stay he met rather ceremoniously with Mifflin Gibbs and US Consul A.H. Francis. Gibbs...
Epilogue: “. . . and all mankind my countrymen”
In 1958, half a century after McGregor’s rescue from Canton Alley, a recent German immigrant named Fred Herzog snapped a colour photo of a very well-dressed Black man walking down Pender Street in...
Bibliography
Most of the material in this book was drawn from the following published and online sources. Some very useful material was also supplied through interviews and correspondence with persons mentioned...
