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Conspicuous Peripheries: Black Identity, Memory, and Community in Chatham, ON, 1860-1980

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Conspicuous Peripheries: Black Identity, Memory, and Community in Chatham, ON, 1860-1980 Conspicuous Peripheries: Black Identity, Memory, and Community in Chatham, ON, 1860-1980 by Carmen Poole A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Social Justice Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto © Copyright by Carmen Poole 2015 Conspicuous Peripheries: Black Identity, Memory, and Community in Chatham, ON, 1860-1980 Carmen Poole Doctor of Philosophy Department of Social Justice Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto 2015 Abstract The history of the black population in Chatham, Ontario is incomplete by virtue of partiality and distortion. This partiality and distortion has had real, if difficult to quantify costs for Chatham's local black population. While it is a worthwhile and necessary project to recuperate lost local histories for their own sake in order to encourage and inform the reframing of larger national and historically more influential histories, this study also focuses on the history of black people who lived in Chatham in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in order to explore situated black lives that were actively constructed and performed. This deliberate attempt to expand the historiography of blacks in Canada from that of black-as-object to black-as-subject required an investigation into the local history of blacks in Chatham, their socio-philosophical and socio-economic heritages and the construction of particular identities shaped by race, class, and gendered interests forged within a shared experience of ongoing white racism. Informed by census data, primary fraternal order documents, and oral testimony, this study also holds that dislocations occurred at the turn of the twentieth century that concretized class membership, exacerbated class distinctions all while complicating the tenability of a coherent and cohesive black community. ii Acknowledgements The space set aside for acknowledgements could hardly begin to detail the appreciation I have for the selfless individuals who have helped this project through all of its fits and starts. I would like to thank Cecilia Morgan for her steady and patient assistance. Her calm and assertive energy countered my not altogether concealed frustration and impatience with certain aspects of this study. With her guidance I grew to appreciate the process as a significant part of the outcome rather than simply the means by which I would produce a deliverable-as-requested. I would also like to thank Ruth Sandwell and Harold Troper for their insightful comments and feedback, without their input this dissertation would have certainly lacked dimension. Personally and professionally invested from the earliest moments in my academic career until this very moment, I would like to thank Dr. Christina Simmons for her steady and continued support. Without her assistance this project would have never been completed. Dr. Anne Forrest also deserves many thanks for her support and interest in my (potential, and by no means definite) academic career. For the images used herein, I thank T.J. Brown from the Chatham-Kent Black Historical Society and Lydia Burggraaf, Curator, Ridge House Museum for their enthusiastic and efficient assistance. Meeting Gwendolyn Robinson many years ago at the Chatham-Kent Black Historical Society set me on the path that led me here. Mrs. Robinson's encouragement, inspiration, willingness to share her time, knowledge, and fixations, deserves a wellspring of gratitude. I love you and I thank you. Meeting and working with Maureen Neill was a most unexpected gift that I continue to cherish. The unlikeliest of pairs, I thank Maureen for her careful and caring nudges that iii continued to motivate me in my most unmotivated moments. Carrie-Anne Sharp, my neighbour, friend, and fellow yellow of Canadian extraction also deserves an honourable mention for the backyard brainstorming sessions. Our stubbornness, combined with our intellectual and emotional might, was too formidable to let our admittedly fluid racial and national identities get drowned out by our Caribbean backyard counterparts. I would like to also thank Alain Brisard for his love and support (emotional, financial, mental). His patience often flew in the face of all reason and for that I am, and will forever be, grateful. Thank you for helping me persevere through my doubts by reminding me that there is no spoon. I'll love you always. To my father, Lorne Poole, and my sister, Shannon Poole-Parker for their check ups and check-ins, I thank you. Without my family this would have been impossible. Lastly, my mother Betty Milburn: her name is written on every single page, whether you can see it or not. Her presence here is so powerfully constant it amazes me that she can be in so many places at the same time. Thank you. I love you. Chicken. Chicken. Chicken. iv Table of Contents Abstract............................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements........................................................................................................................iii Table of Contents.............................................................................................................................v List of Tables..................................................................................................................................vi List of Figures................................................................................................................................vii Introduction......................................................................................................................................2 Chapter 1 "They should be called the Coons, because they are from Coontown:" Black History in Early Chatham.........................................................................................................................................22 Chapter 2 Black Middle-Class Tradition Crosses the 49th Parallel................................................................57 Chapter 3 "Masonry is not intended for the rabble:" The Prince Hall Lodge in Chatham, Ontario............104 Chapter 4 "The bad odour comes, I think, from what we do not see:" Chatham's Black Population in the 'Post Exodus' Era..........................................................................................................................177 Chapter 5 "...They haven't got to call you a nigger if they treat you like a nigger:" Racism and the Black Experience in Chatham Ontario...................................................................................................251 Conclusion...................................................................................................................................301 Appendices...................................................................................................................................305 Bibliography................................................................................................................................313 v List of Tables Table 1: Population of Free blacks - U.S. Nationally....................................................................65 Table 2: Population of Free blacks - By State...............................................................................66 Table 3: Age and Sex ratio: 1861 census US born........................................................................68 Table 4: 1861 Occupations of US-born Black Males, Chatham Census.......................................75 Table 5: 1861 Occupations of US-born Females, Chatham Census..............................................78 Table 6: Black Families Organized by Birth Place of Children....................................................85 Table 7: Chatham Population - Total and Total Black................................................................179 Table 8: Chatham Population - Total Percent Increase and Total Black Decrease.....................179 Table 9: Dates of Immigration, Number of Blacks Arriving, 1901.............................................180 Table 10: Dates of Immigration, Number of Blacks Arriving, 1911...........................................181 Table 11: 1901 Occupations of Black Males, Chatham..............................................................273 Table 12: 1901 Occupations of Black Females, Chatham...........................................................275 vi List of Figures Figure 1: Garner House, King Street, Chatham.............................................................................23 Figure 2: Nathaniel Murray............................................................................................................25 Figure 3: A scene on King Street in Chatham, 1880s....................................................................27 Figure 4: Browning Family, 1910s................................................................................................57 Figure 5: Grace Browning.............................................................................................................58 . Figure 6: Martha Browning (nee Duckett)...................................................................................102 Figure 7: Cover page of the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge Proceedings 1875,1876................111 Figure 8: Isaac Holden.................................................................................................................113
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