BC Black History Timeline

“By the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men (10% of the Union Army) served as soldiers in the U.S. Army and another 19,000 served in the Navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war—30,000 of infection or disease. Black soldiers served in artillery and infantry and performed all noncombat support functions that sustain an army, as well. Black carpenters, chaplains, cooks, guards, laborers, nurses, scouts, spies, steamboat pilots, surgeons, and teamsters also contributed to the war cause. There were nearly 80 black commissioned officers. Black women, who could not formally join the Army, nonetheless served as nurses, spies, and scouts, the most famous being Harriet Tubman who scouted for the 2d South Carolina Volunteers.”

Source: Black Soldiers in the U.S. Military During the Civil War

On April 15,1865 President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in Washington, D.C.

Early in August 1866, an Act for the Union of the colonies was passed by the Imperial Parliament. It became effective at noon on November 19, 1866, when it was proclaimed simultaneously in the two capitals, New Westminster and Victoria.

On July, 1, 1867 The British North America Act came into effect marking the birth of the Dominion of Canada; comprising four provinces: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. Ottawa was chosen as the capital and recently knighted Sir John A. Macdonald was the first prime minister.

We know that some Blacks did return to fight in the Civil War and after the Civil War with the abolition of slavery in the U.S. in 1865.
*On July 21,1868 the Fourteenth Amendment is ratified, granting citizenship to any person born or naturalized in the United States.
*On February 26,1869 Congress drafts the Fifteenth Amendment; it is ratified on March 30, 1870  granting African American men the right to vote by declaring that the right to vote shall not be denied on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
*Mifflin Gibbs returned to the United States in 1869/1870 and in his autobiography he writes “I had left politically ignoble; I was returning panoplied with the nobility of an American citizen.”

British Columbian Population by Principal Racial Ethnic Origins 1871. Source: Jean Barman “The West Beyond the West”, pg. 429. Total population: 36,427 comprised of:

• Indigenous est. 25,661 (70.8%)
• British/Continental European 8,576 (23.7%)
• Asian 1,548 (4.3%)

An informal census by the Victoria Police Department in 1871 counted 128 colored men and 89 colored women. The official Canadian census states 462 Black people in BC in 1871.

Pompey Jackson is believed to be the oldest person buried at Ross Bay Cemetery (G42 W18).  On October 3,1873 on page 3 of the British Daily Colonist is a brief notice of his death “Old Jackson, a colored man, aged 111 years, died near the Royal Oak yesterday (October 2, 1873). He was born in Virginia in 1762.

*His death in 1873, age 111 indicates that if he was one of the settlers who arrived in 1858 he would have been about 96 at that time.  Did he come with family and who were they?  Two men, Thomas H. Jackson (Drayman) and Richard Jackson (Gardener) did apply for citizenship in September 1858 but there are no records found that they are related.
*A year before his death there is a civil case reported in the British Colonist dealing with a dispute about the ownership of a cow “Pompey Jackson vs. C. King” giving perhaps some indication that Jackson was farming here.

Today the First Baptist Victoria church is located at the corner of North Park and Quadra Streets, Victoria.
In the initial stages of this church, Blacks and whites, met in homes for prayer meetings.

“On May 3, 1876 fifteen people met to organize the First Baptist Church. They were: William Carnes, Fielding Spotts, Alexander Clyde, Julia Spotts, Mrs. Fanny Clyde, Thomas W. Pierre, Caleb Bishop, Alfred Oldershaw, Mrs. Johnson, Thomas Mathews, John Sluggett, Augustus Christopher, Madison F. Bailey, Mrs. Sally Page, Mrs. Mary A. Bailey. This was the first Baptist cause to be inaugurated in British Columbia, and the first Canadian Baptist work west of Winnipeg.” First Baptist Church History