Centre D

Topic: Women Leaders of Black History 

Learning Goal: Examine important female leaders of black history and record your research and ideas.
Task: Chose one leader to focus on and using the graphic organizer to record your responses. Use the resources (books, websites, and fact sheets) that are provided at the centre for your research.

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman, a runaway slave from Maryland, became known as the “Moses” of her people and the “conductor” who led hundreds of slaves to freedom along the Underground Railroad. In 1850, when the far-reaching United States Fugitive Law was passed, she guided fugitive slaves further north into Canada. When angry slave owners posted rewards for her capture, she continued her work despite great personal risk.

St. Catharines, Ontario (a town close to the border with the United States) was on the route and offered employment opportunities, making it a common destination for the former fugitives, including Harriet Tubman, who lived there from 1851 to 1857. Many of the people she rescued were relatives of those already in St. Catharines including her own parents, brothers and sisters and their families.

Later, Harriet Tubman became a leader in the Abolitionist movement. During the Civil war she worked as a nurse and served as a spy for the Union forces in South Carolina.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/multiculturalism/black/people.asp

Viola Davis Desmond

Viola Davis Desmond (1914–1965) was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She was an African-Canadian who ran her own beauty parlor and beauty college in Halifax. On November 8, 1946, while waiting for her car to be repaired, she decided to go see a movie in the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow. She refused to sit in the balcony, which was designated exclusively for Blacks. Instead, she sat on the ground floor, which was for Whites only. She was forcibly removed and arrested.

Viola was found guilty of not paying the one-cent difference in tax on the balcony ticket. She was sentenced to 30 days in jail and paid a $26 fine. The trial mainly focused on the issue of tax evasion and not on the discriminatory practices of the theatre. Dissatisfied with the verdict, the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, with Viola’s help, took the case to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. The conviction was upheld.

Eventually, Viola Desmond settled in New York where she died.

More recently, on April 15, 2010, the province of Nova Scotia granted an official apology and a free pardon to Viola. Lieutenant-Governor Mayann Francis, the first black person to serve as the Queen’s representative in the province of Nova Scotia, presided over a ceremony in Halifax and exercised the Royal Prerogative of Mercy to grant a free pardon to her. Viola’s 83-year-old sister, Wanda Robson, was there to accept the apology. Premier Darrell Dexter also apologized to Viola’s family and all black Nova Scotians for the racism she was subjected to in an incident he called unjust.

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/multiculturalism/black/people.asp

Michaëlle Jean

Michaëlle Jean, social activist, journalist, documentary filmmaker, governor general (b at Port-au-Prince, Haiti 6 Sept 1957). Jean's early years were spent in a middle-class neighbourhood in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, where her father was principal and teacher of philosophy at an elite, Protestant preparatory school. She was educated at home because her parents, Roger and Luce, did not want her to attend school, where she would have to swear allegiance to dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier. In 1965, her father was arrested and tortured. In 1967 he fled to Canada; his wife and two daughters joined him the next year


Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893)

Mary Ann Shadd Cary arrived in Canada at the time of the Underground Railroad to teach the children of arriving refugees and distribute anti-slavery materials. She was a woman of many talents. Mary Ann Shadd Cary earned her law degree at the end of the American Civil War and worked as a lawyer, teacher, lecturer, suffragist and publisher.
She was the first woman in Canada to become a publisher, starting the Provincial Freeman in 1853.

Resources

Books:
"Viola Desmond Won't Be Budged" by Richard Rudnicki and Jody Nyasha Warner

Websites:

Black History Canada