Canadian Colored, Parts 1 and 2

In the early 1900s, Black speculators from the rural United States began moving towards the safe haven of the Canadian prairie provinces—they were in search of a place to raise their families, nurture their communities, and tend to the land. Many came from the American South, but mostly they came from what were once the Oklahoma and Indian Twin Territories from which many had fled in 1907 during the formation of the state of Oklahoma and the inhumane segregation laws that followed and attacked them. They made new homes in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba as homesteaders, farmers, and whatever else they could find. They became Canadian, despite being, in the parlance of the day, “colored”.

Their communities have largely disappeared now, but they remain a crucial historical touchpoint in the identity of Black writers on the Prairies. The figure of this “colored Canadian” looms large in the Black past of so many writers and thinkers.