Black Power Enters Canada

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31863, 16 December 1968, Page 27

Black Power Enters Canada

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter—Copyright/ TORONTO, Dec. 13. j The organised Black Power movement of the United States has made a foray into Canada, trying to instil a more militant spirit among Nova Scotia Negroes. It has not enlisted more than a handful of followers so far, but it has at least managed to make the provincial government realise it must be more aggressive in its moves to wipe out injustice. The home of 15,000 of Can ada's 38,000 Negroes, Nova Scotia has never before had reason to fear that its coloured population might turn to violence to press demands fot full equality. One reason is that discrimination has not been as flag rant as that practised in the southern United States. Another is that the Nova Scotia Negro has preferred to hope and wait, rather than resort to threats. Moderate Negro leaders have been saying for years that “time is running out.” but it was not until the American Black Power advo cate, Mr Stokely Carmichael, visited Halifax, the provincial capital, in mid-October that the warnings began to take on some urgency. A few weeks ago a group of United States-based Black Panther militants arrived in the city and stirred things up with their talk of “freedom now.”

For a while there were fears that they would try to disrupt the Nova Scotia human rights conference scheduled for the first week in December. but the Black Panthers soon realised that most of the province’s Negroes were opposed to violence at this time. The result was the formation of a Black United Front, made up of both militants and moderates, which agreed to give the Premier (Mr G. I. Smith) a reasonable amount of time to make good his promises.

During the last 10 years the province has passed human rights legislation, established a human .rights commission and sponsored a programme to improve the Negro’s opportunities. In that time the country’s worst black slum, a Halifax district called Africville, has been eliminated and its families integrated into the general community. But the need for better housing, education and employfnent opportunities and more effective human rights legislation remains. The story of the Negro in Canada has "its beginnings during the American Revolution of 1775, when many British Empire loyalists fled to Canada, bringing their slaves with them into exile. The British ships that burned Washington during the war of 1812 brought many Negro refugees to Halifax, and these were settled in. small communities throughout Npva Scotia. Even after the abolition of slavery in the. province in 1833, the Negro had .problems. The land he was given was, often barren, he was usually' unskilled in agriculture, and had neither the tools to till-.the, soil-properly nor the money to buy them. He. ’drifted to the cities

[Where, lacking leadership among his own people and disdained by whites, he was confined to menial jobs. The biggest influx of Negroes came during the American Civil War of 186165 when many slaves, among them the famed Uncle Tom, managed to flee by way of what became known as “the underground railway". Because Negroes have always been a small proportion of Canada’s population—one in 500, compared with one in 10 in the United States—the discrimination practised against him has never been has obvious as in Georgia or Louisiana. But even if it is more subtle, prejudice certainly exists, reflected in such situations as the difficulty of joining some labour unions or trying to obtain certain types of white-collar jobs. Canadians tend to be rather smug when discussing the way Negroes are treated in this country. They like to mention that a Negro was elected to Parliament in the General Election of last June. But for every Negro who becomes a success and wins recognition from the white community, there are hundreds who remain trapped in the sort of poverty that Hilton Jarvis knows. This Negro labourer, aged 48, was thrown into prison five months ago in Nova Scotia’s Digby County because of his failure to pay accumulated poll tax of 8100— counties in the province levy $2O yearly tax on persons who do not own real property or pay a household occupancy tax. While Jarvis was in prison, construction work became available, but although this would have enabled him to earn money to pay off his debt he was not released. It was not until a white lawyer happened to meet him in prison a few days ago that the case came to public notice. He was immediately freed—his tax still unpaid—never having been told that he could have gone before the municipal council to be exempted from the tax for various reasons, including unemployment.