[Footnote 6: Ibid., p. 1023.]
[Footnote 7: Wright, "Negro Rural Communities in Indiana," Southern
Workman, vol. xxxvii., p. 169.]
In the colored settlements of Canada the outlook for Negro education was still brighter. This better opportunity was due to the high character of the colonists, to the mutual aid resulting from the proximity of the communities, and to the coöperation of the Canadians. The previous experience of most of these adventurers as sojourners in the free States developed in them such noble traits that they did not have to be induced to ameliorate their condition. They had already come under educative influences which prepared them for a larger task in Canada. Fifteen thousand of sixty thousand Negroes in Canada in 1860 were free born.[1] Many of those, who had always been free, fled to Canada[2] when the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 made it possible for even a dark-complexioned Caucasian to be reduced to a state of bondage. Fortunately, too, these people settled in the same section. The colored settlements at Dawn, Colchester, Elgin, Dresden, Windsor, Sandwich, Queens, Bush, Wilberforce, Hamilton, St. Catherines, Chatham, Riley, Anderton, Maiden, Gonfield, were all in Southern Ontario. In the course of time the growth of these groups produced a population sufficiently dense to facilitate coöperation in matters pertaining to social betterment. The uplift of the refugees was made less difficult also by the self-denying white persons who were their first teachers and missionaries. While the hardships incident to this pioneer effort all but baffled the ardent apostle to the lowly, he found among the Canadian whites so much more sympathy than among the northerners that his work was more agreeable and more successful than it would have been in the free States. Ignoring the request that the refugees be turned from Canada as undesirables, the white people of that country protected and assisted them.[3] Canadians later underwent some change in their attitude toward their newcomers, but these British-Americans never exhibited such militant opposition to the Negroes as sometimes developed in the Northern States.[4]
[Footnote 1: Siebert, The Underground Railroad, p. 222.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., pp. 247-250.]
[Footnote 3: Siebert, The Underground Railroad, pp. 201 and 233.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid., 233.]
The educational privileges which the refugees hoped to enjoy in Canada, however, were not easily exercised. Under the Canadian law they could send their children to the common schools, or use their proportionate share of the school funds in providing other educational facilities.[1] But conditions there did not at first redound to the education of the colored children.[2] Some were too destitute to avail themselves of these opportunities; others, unaccustomed to this equality of fortune, were timid about having their children mingle with those of the whites, and not a few clad their youths so poorly that they became too unhealthy to attend regularly[3]. Besides, race prejudice was not long in making itself the most disturbing factor. In 1852 Benjamin Drew found the minds of the people of Sandwich much exercised over the question of admitting Negroes into the public schools. The same feeling was then almost as strong in Chatham, Hamilton, and London[4]. Consequently, "partly owing to this prejudice, and partly to their own preference, the colored people, acting under the provision of the law that allowed them to have separate schools, set up their own schools in Sandwich and in many other parts of Ontario"[5]. There were separate schools at Colchester, Amherstburg, Sandwich, Dawn, and Buxton[6]. It was doubtless because of the rude behavior of white pupils toward the children of the blacks that their private schools flourished at London, Windsor, and other places[7]. The Negroes, themselves, however, did not object to the coeducation of the races. Where there were a few white children in colored settlements they were admitted to schools maintained especially for pupils of African descent.[8] In Toronto no distinction in educational privileges was made, but in later years there flourished an evening school for adults of color.[9]
[Footnote 1: Howe, The Refugees from Slavery, p. 77.]
[Footnote 2: Drew said: "The prejudice against the African race is here [Canada] strongly marked. It had not been customary to levy school taxes on the colored people. Some three or four years since a trustee assessed a school tax on some of the wealthy citizens of that class. They sent their children at once into the public school. As these sat down the white children near them deserted the benches: and in a day or two the white children were wholly withdrawn, leaving the schoolhouse to the teacher and his colored pupils. The matter was at last 'compromised': a notice 'Select School' was put on the schoolhouse: the white children were selected in and the black were selected out." See Drew's. A North-side View of Slavery, etc., p. 341.]