BC Black History Timeline

The Slavery Abolition Act, passed by the British Parliament in 1833, came into force on August 1, 1834.
In fact, the Act liberated less than 50 enslaved Africans in British North America. For most enslaved people in Canada, the Act resulted only in partial liberation, only emancipated children under the age of six, and obliged others to be retained for four to six years as apprentices. The Act did initiate the formal end to slavery, and since 2021 Emancipation Day has been commemorated annually in Canada on August 1. Emancipation Day in Canada: Past, Present, and Future

Emancipation and abolition of slavery became law in the U.S. through the 13th Amendment to the Constitution after it was ratified by 2/3 of the states on December 6, 1865.

On April 14, 1858, as the Black community were celebrating the release of fugitive slave Archy Lee at the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in San Francisco, Jeremiah Nagle, captain of the steamship Commodore, arrived at the meeting. It is reported that Nagle came well-prepared to the meeting with maps of Vancouver Island and a letter from “a gentleman in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company of undoubted veracity” inviting the Black community to come to the Colony of Vancouver Island and giving details about the colony. The Pioneer Committee arrived in Victoria on April 25, 1858.

The Colony of British Columbia, named by Queen Victoria, with New Westminster as its capital, is the area today known as “the mainland”. It was a separate entity from the Colony of Vancouver Island. Accounts relate that James Douglas agreed to sever his ties to the Hudson’s Bay Company to become governor of both the Colony of Vancouver Island and the Colony of British Columbia.

Pre-emption was the legal method of acquiring Crown land that had not been fully surveyed by claiming and improving it for settlement and agricultural purposes. The first Black pre-empters on Salt Spring from California arrived in the summer of 1859. They included E.A. Booth, Armstead Buckner, William Isaacs, and Fielding Spotts. Black settlers later in that same year included Abraham Copeland, Levi Davis, W.L. Harrison, the Jones brothers (John Craven, William Allen, and Elias), William Robinson, and Hiram Whims. Daniel Fredison, a Black man from Hawaii, also settled on the island.
Salt Spring Island Archives has mapped 26 Black homesteads

The Daily Colonist reported on a “difference of opinion” between Rev. W.F. Clarke and Rev. M. MacFie, both missionaries sent to Victoria from England by the Congregational Missionary Society, “Mr. Clark holds that Christianity knows no difference between the white and colored man; and therefore he will not suit the prejudices of anyone by creating a ‘negro’s corner’ in his church. As a matter of ‘taste’ Mr. MacFie prefers separating them.”

• The Colonial Missionary Society settled the issue on August 14,1860 by passing a resolution holding, “That this committee never have sanctioned and never will sanction in Churches wholly or in part sustained by the funds of the Colonial Missionary Society, the compulsory separation, in places of worship, of the colored races from the white population.”

The “First Victoria Directory” was originally published in March 1860. It is “comprised of a general directory of citizens, also, an Officials list, list of voters, postal arrangements and notices of trades and professions; preceded by a preface and synopsis of the commercial progress of the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. Illustrated”
From the recognized names, an estimated 27 Black men were listed as citizens. Moses Rowe Smith, who immigrated to Victoria from Ontario, appears to be the only Black man on the list of voters.

On April 12, 1861 President Abraham Lincoln declared war between the Union and Confederate states. An estimated four million enslaved people in 15 states and territories were “owned” by 52,128 slaveholders. There were also an estimated 400,000 free African Americans. The war is considered to have ended on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant.

Four candidates contended for two vacant Legislative Assembly seats in Victoria in an 1861 by-election.
Joseph Trutch came in second in voting and Jacob Francis was third. There was public debate and support for Francis’s claim to the seat, in that Trutch was absent from the colony when the election was called and could not take the required oath of allegiance. Francis’s petition failed, and Trutch’s election stood.

Jacob Francis fought discrimination by suing two bar owners for refusing to serve him. While he was not successful against the first barkeeper in April 1860, in July 1862 he achieved a favorable outcome against the second barkeeper. The magistrate ruled that any barkeeper refusing service to Black men would not be given a license or would be find five pounds sterling and their licence would not be renewed.

The Emancipation Proclamation issued by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln the previous September came into effect on January 1,1863. However it did not abolish slavery. The Proclamation declared free all enslaved people in the Confederate States who resided in territory still in rebellion against the United States. As the Union Army captured more Confederate territory it would also liberate enslaved people living in that territory. Emancipation and abolition of slavery only became law in the U.S. through the 13th Amendment to the Constitution after it was ratified by 2/3 of the states on December 6, 1865.