By Neil Armstrong
Donald Moore is featured in the book Welcome to Black: An Iconic Toronto Neighbourhood published by A Different Publisher in 2022
Sixty-nine years ago today, a delegation of 35 Black activists from the Negro Citizenship Association (NCA)—led by Barbados-born Donald Willard Moore, also known as Don Moore or “Uncle Don,” and Canada-born Stanley Grizzle—met in Ottawa with federal Cabinet members to challenge Canada’s anti-Black immigration policies.
On April 27, 1954, the delegation presented a brief to Walter E. Harris, minister of immigration and member of parliament for High Park. In the book, Towards Freedom: The African-Canadian Experience, Ken Alexander and Avis Glaze write: “The group’s presentation, thoroughly researched, articulate, and defiant, changed the course of Canadian history. Many of the delegates had been active for years. By helping thousands of blacks settle, find jobs, unionize workers, meet contacts, and avoid deportation, people like Moore, Grizzle, Harry Gairey, Lenore Richardson, and many others, were building the community from the ground up.”
In the memoir, A Black Man’s Toronto, 1914-1980: The Reminiscences of Harry Gairey, edited and with an introduction by Donna Hill—mother of author Lawrence Hill and singer-songwriter Dan Hill—Gairey recollects that the NCA was founded in February 1951 in Moore’s house on Dundas Street in Toronto with the chief aim to “try and break up this immigration problem, because I knew that it was discriminatory.” As a sleeping car porter working around Union Station, Gairey said he saw all of the immigrants coming in, “but no Blacks, not a trickle. I saw a number of immigrants from the countries that we’d been fighting, Italy, Germany, all over, the Europeans were coming in, no Black.
“The climax came when I went down to Jamaica after the war. I saw codfish from Newfoundland, from Halifax, canned goods like sardines and salmon from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia. The people in the West Indies had to buy all these Canadian goods. And still, they were not allowed to come into the country, to get some of that money so they could turn it back to their people.”
Gairey said he was responsible for getting a sleeping car for the 35 members of the delegation. Regarding the meeting with Minister Harris, he recollects that: “It was a small office, so he started apologizing you know, because there were so many of us. I said, “I wouldn’t worry about that because we just want to present this brief to you, and the injustices, and introduce the president.” Donna Hill wrote that brief to the Minister of Immigration and Norman Grizzle read the brief.”
Alexander and Glaze note that Stanley Grizzle summarized Canada’s immigration policy vis-à-vis blacks as a “Jim Crow Iron Curtain.” Quoting Moore from Donald Moore: An Autobiography, 1985, the authors wrote that he stated at the Ottawa meeting: “You kept them out because they are black. If I were a Communist, there is opportunity for me to change and become a decent, respectable Canadian citizen. But I am born black; God has made me that way. You are asking me to undo what God has done.”
Bromley: Tireless Champion for Just Causes. Memoirs of Bromley L. Armstrong written with Sheldon Taylor notes that the 35-member NCA delegation included various Black community organizations, labour, and mainstream religious denominations who were involved in further deliberations and strategy sessions while travelling by train to Ottawa.
“Reading from the final draft of the NCA’s brief Moore requested that the St. Laurent government amend its understanding of “British subject” to include all British subjects and citizens of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth,” writes Armstrong.
It would take meetings with government officials from Barbados and Jamaica, and more than a year of lobbying before any opening up of Canada’s immigration occurred. A memo from Laval Fortier to the director of immigration, dated June 10, 1955, noted that the Cabinet had decided “to admit a certain number of domestics from the British West Indies on an experimental basis. 75 of these domestics to be to be selected from Jamaica and 25 from Barbados.” The memo also noted that, “these domestics are to be admitted as immigrants upon arrival.”
Armstrong noted that: “As members of the NCA we did not get all that we had wished for. Yet with the West Indian Domestic Scheme, a formalized arrangement between Ottawa and certain Caribbean nations, the doors were being inched open. In the process, Ottawa politicians and bureaucrats were sensitized in some small measure about the dangers of their racist immigration policies. The many tens of thousands of immigrants from the Caribbean now living in Canada are a testament to our efforts.”
Describing the delegation to Ottawa as “the first time in history that African Canadians had undertaken such a mission—to challenge the policies of the federal government,” Stanley Grizzle in his memoir, My Name’s Not George: The Story of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in Canada, written with John Cooper, noted that he told Minister Harris that they were prepared to continue fighting “unremittingly for the right of all people of this planet to enter Canada and become its citizens without penalty or reward because of their race, colour, religion, national origin or ancestry.” Grizzle said NCA assured the minister that they had taken that stance based on the findings that Canada’s immigration laws against blacks were premeditated and discriminatory. “I presented statistics showing that immigration from “white” countries such as England far outstripped immigration from the West Indies, Japan and China. I pointed out that between 1871 and 1951 there was a constant increase in the population of the white European group and a decrease in the population of non-whites in Canada, a situation deemed “dangerous, strange and unfortunate”.”
In a speech titled “Reimagining Generational Wealth Beyond Biological Imperatives,” at an event organized by Kean Real Estate Group in Brampton, Ontario, in February this year, Dr. Karen Flynn, associate professor in the Department of Gender and Women's Studies, Center for African Studies, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who was the keynote speaker referenced the work of Moore, the community icon and trailblazer.
She said historically and in this contemporary moment, Black people have harnessed their social and cultural capital to ensure their survival. Social capital is defined as internal connections between people within the same group. Cultural capital refers to the symbols, ideas, tastes, and preferences that can be strategically used as resources to advance social action. Social and cultural capital is visible in the organizations Black Canadians and Caribbean people established to fill in the gap, noted Dr. Flynn. She cited the Coloured Women Club of Montreal (CWCM) and the Negro Citizenship Association as examples of such capital.
The CWCM was founded in 1902 to assist with the 1918 flu epidemic, kept a bed at Grace Dart Hospital, and cared for the homes and children of hospitalized parents. The club members volunteered as visiting nurses and nurses’ aides. Dr. Flynn, who is the author of the book Moving Beyond Borders: A History of Black Canadian and Caribbean Women in the Diaspora, noted that the CWCM also maintained a plot of land at the Mount Royal Cemetery for the interment of community members for those unable to afford the cost of burials.
She said the Negro Citizenship Association that Moore established in 1951 was a social and humanitarian organization. “The NCA fought relentlessly to challenge Canada’s racist immigration policies which the organization pointed out denied equal immigration status to non-white British subjects. Moore and the NCA along with delegates went to Ottawa to present a brief. To be clear, Moore was also advocating for citizens from India and Pakistan.”
Dr. Flynn said as a result of Moore and the NCA, Canada began to relax its immigration policies, which led to the West Indian Domestic scheme—an agreement between the government of Canada and various Caribbean islands. “These 100 domestic workers who came to Canada beginning in1955 from Barbados and Jamaica made it possible for our parents to be here. If you are interested in learning more about the West Indian Domestic scheme, check out the podcast, “Strong and Free,” or just do a search for Karen Flynn and Garvia Bailey.”
 |
| Dr. Karen Flynn, associate professor in the Department of Gender and Women's Studies, Center for African Studies, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, was the keynote speaker at an event organized by Mean Real Estate Group in Brampton, Ontario |
In 1956, Moore and two other members of the Negro Citizenship Association purchased a 12-room house on Cecil Street in Toronto and converted it into a recreation centre for the West Indian community called Donavalon Centre.
Dr. Flynn pointed out that this was her first example of reimagining generational wealth beyond biological family members. “What if instead of a plaque, the Caribbean community still owned that center some 67 years later? We can imagine the possibilities.”
According to Armstrong, even in his sixties Moore professed a commitment to the radical politics of Marcus Garvey and the UNIA. In fact, the Toronto branch of that organization was founded in 1919 in Moore’s tailor shop when it was located on Spadina Avenue, he said.
In the book Welcome to Blackhurst: An Iconic Toronto Neighbourhood, there is a poem “Tell me more…” written by Itah Sadu about Moore in which she describes him as a community leader, a gentle giant, a man who after leaving Barbados lived in New York and then Montreal before moving to Toronto, his community advocacy and activism, and “a man who lived to the age of 102 with incredible vision and elevation for all Canadians….”
No comments:
Post a Comment