Black Islanders

Richard Wilbur is Supervisor of the Legislative Research Service at the
New Brunswick Legislature and author of The Rise of French New
Brunswick.

The author is described as a folklorist, fiddle player, historian, and
lawyer. He has ably used three of these skills to produce a fine piece
of research on what at first glance would seem to be an esoteric
subject. Very few present-day Prince Edward Islanders can trace their
ancestry back to slaves, “a single and involuntary immigrant group.”
Never numbering more than about 200, the Island’s black population
gradually migrated (mostly to New England) or intermarried with their
white neighbors.

Why write about such a small minority? The author may have been
encouraged by a grant from the federal department of Multiculturalism
and Citizenship, but he obviously had a strong personal interest in
acquainting others with some remarkable figures, from George “Old
Chocolate” Godfrey, the first boxer to break the American color bar,
to P.E.I.’s “Mr. Baseball,” Charlie Ryan, who served as
Charlottetown’s recreational director from 1966 to 1989.

The first chapters of this short but well-written and thoughtful study
are mostly accounts based on court cases involving black slaves. They
reveal the deep racial prejudices of that day—prejudices that are
still with us, albeit more hidden. The strongest section, in terms of
both research and fascinating stories, describes the Bog,
Charlottetown’s black district throughout the 19th century, which was,
in fact, a microcosm of larger racial ghettos elsewhere. But, as Hornby
aptly puts it, “black history on Prince Edward Island is much more
than a litany of oppression, neglect and disappearance. . . . Even what
little is known about the lives of black Islanders shows them to have
been strong and adaptable survivors of slavery, poverty, exploitation
and racism.” He concludes that regardless of their small numbers, they
“are a cultural group worth remembering.” In the same vein, this
excellent study is worth reading.