Within four years, slaves in the colonies of Barbados, Bermuda, Guyana, Jamaica, and South Africa received their full freedom because the limited apprenticeship system of the Emancipation Act they adopted was brought to an early end. On August 1, 1838, these islands officially ended apprenticeships, granting total emancipation to approximately four hundred thousand indentured servants. This, of course, was an occasion for joyous celebration, because now complete abolition had been achieved in all British colonies. On August 1, 1838 in Spanish Town, then the capital of Jamaica, a hearse containing chains and shackles often used to restrain slaves was driven through the streets and then symbolically buried followed by bonfires and feasts. It was also noted that the soon-to-be ex-slaves climbed the hills and waited for the sun to rise, the dawn of the first day of freedom.11 Early Emancipation Day celebrations in the British Caribbean began to take place as part of Carnival and integrated numerous elements of other African-influenced cultural rituals such as jonkunnu in Jamaica and canboulay in Trinidad. These festivities involved the playing of musical instruments, singing and dancing, parading, theatrical acts/shows, and feasts. Over a century later, Caribana, a carnival festival in Toronto, would originate from these roots.
During the next twenty-seven years, Emancipation Day celebrations in the free northern American states, the West Indies, and Canada were used as a platform to petition for the end of American slavery. Participants hoped that the spirit and the momentum towards freedom would continue to spread to the southern United States to free almost ten million still in bondage. Finally, in 1865 the Emancipation Proclamation legislated the manumission of enslaved African Americans. The various slave laws and abolition legislation enacted between 1793 and 1865 heavily impacted the transcontinental and global freedom movements. Likewise, they influenced the tone and the goals of Emancipation Day celebrations in the 1800s. The hard-earned success of the abolition movement culminated in an upsurge of freedom festivals up and down the Atlantic shore and gave birth to a significant African-Canadian tradition. August 1, 1838, was a true Emancipation Day, one that would continue to be celebrated for years to come.
The Route to Celebrations in Ontario
Freedom is the most precious of our treasures, and it will not be allowed to vanish so long as men survive who offered their lives for it.
— Paul Robeson, valedictory speech, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1919.
Amherstburg, along the Detroit River, and Malden are two towns in Essex County that were the sites of large Black communities. Both locales are adjacent and were part of Malden Township until Amherstburg separated from the township in 1851. The earliest African settlers in the area were the slaves owned by French colonists and British Loyalists, such as Colonel Matthew Elliot who owned sixty slaves in 1784 when he arrived in Fort Malden (now part of Amherstburg) to settle on his land grant of eight hundred hectares. Other early Black pioneers included Loyalists like James Fry and James Robertson, who settled on land grants in the area.1
The early nineteenth century witnessed an exploding fugitive population in Amherstburg, the most accessible town in Essex County for the fleeing slaves. Situated along the Canadian side of the Detroit River, it was located at the narrowest point that refugee slaves could use to cross the river from the American side. Not surprisingly, at that time Amherstburg was one of the principal terminals on the Underground Railroad. In the 1820s, Black fugitives living in Amherstburg introduced tobacco farming while others ran small businesses such as grocery stores, barbershops, hotels, taverns, and livery stables, or worked various occupations like mechanics and carriage drivers. By 1859 the Amherstburg’s Black community numbered about eight hundred while the neighbouring Malden Township’s total population was nine hundred.
Blacks embraced their new British citizenship and 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