Latest news with #BlackHistory
CBC
a day ago
- CBC
Take a journey of discovery through Ottawa's Black history
Social Sharing Tour buses are nothing new on Ottawa's roads, but now you can jump aboard and learn about the city's Black history. Volunteers with Black History Ottawa researched and designed the twice-weekly, 25-stop tour featuring stories about Black pioneers and visits to notable landmarks of Black history in Ottawa and Canada. Among the first stops is Nelson Mandela Square between Elgin Street and Ottawa city hall, where the South African president and anti-apartheid activist unveiled a plaque at the human rights monument during a visit in 1990. The tour also passes the "piano-playing" statue of jazz great Oscar Peterson outside the National Arts Centre, and the original Browns Cleaners location in the ByWard Market, opened by Black entrepreneurs Herbert "Pops" Brown and his wife Estelle in 1957. Another point of interest is the site of a former YWCA where women who came to Canada under the West Indian Domestic Scheme would gather to share news on their only day off. Tour guide Britney Achu, who's studying biomedical science at the University of Ottawa, said she's passionate about Black history and how it has shaped the capital. "Everyone should be taking a moment to … learn about the City of Ottawa and the people who have impacted our history, our story and the connection that we all have with it all," she said. From earliest settlers to a governor general As the bus wound its way through Rockcliffe, Achu shared stories of former governor general Michaëlle Jean. At the lookout, Achu spoke of a little-known man named London Oxford, who arrived in the early 1800s with lumber baron Philemon Wright and settled near Kettle Island. "London Oxford was perhaps the first person of African descent to settle in the Ottawa Valley," Achu informed the tour. "I don't know anything about Black history in Canada," said Loutchka Profete, who's originally from Haiti and now lives in Gatineau, Que., the city Wright founded. "I'm glad to know that when Philemon Wright came here it was a diverse group. The Black presence is not that recent — they've been here longer than we thought." Black History Ottawa's Jean-Marie Guerrier helped launch the tour. As a student growing up in Montreal, Guerrier said he learned more about the Black American experience than the Canadian one. "Blacks have been here a long time," said Guerrier. "Yeah, we are Canadians. It brings that sense of pride. I do belong in this place." Rediscovering their city At the Public Service Alliance of Canada headquarters on Gilmour Street, tour participants learned about James Best, a key figure in the precursor to the county's largest public sector union. As the bus passed by Parliament Hill, Achu told her guests about Jean Augustine, the first Black woman elected to the House of Commons, and Lincoln Alexander, the first Black man elected to the House of Commons in 1968. Alexander was appointed to cabinet in 1979. Participant Yoline Joseph-Hoskin has been on Black history tours in Nova Scotia where she visited the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre, but said she wanted to learn more about the Black experience in Ottawa. "I think you feel better when you have a better connection to your city. When you can feel represented, you can feel the spirit of your ancestors," she explained. Organizers say the tour might be about Ottawa's Black legacy, but everyone is welcome on the journey. "We are so happy when we see people of different communities come and participate in the tour," said Guerrier. "One of the comments we hear is, 'I walk by this place all the time, I did not know about this history." "I think we're lighting a spark under people," Achu agreed. "We're fanning the flame." Black History Ottawa tours are offered Wednesdays and Saturdays through Oct. 18. Wednesday tours are free, sponsored by the City of Ottawa. Saturday tours cost $20 for adults, $10 for students and senior, and are free for youth 12 and under.
Washington Post
5 days ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Graves near site of Maryland reform school for Black children rediscovered
At the base of a towering tree in an overgrown Maryland forest, the gravestone of William Jones has been pushed sideways by roots and earth in the 138 years since he was buried there. Jones, a Black boy from Baltimore, was 17 in 1887 when he is believed to have died while imprisoned at what was then the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children. The facility — now called the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center — is still located across a winding road from his resting place. Another 100 mossy graves believed to belong to more Black children sit nearby, their weathered tombstones sinking into the forest floor beneath leaves and branches. For more than a century, their stories have been lost and their graves left to deteriorate, despite records that show state officials have been aware of the segregated cemetery since at least the 1970s. There is no sign marking it, no memorial acknowledging what happened here, no groundskeeper to sweep away the brush and the bramble. There are no flowers left by family, because there are no headstones, just rows and rows of unmarked cinder blocks that symbolize Maryland's long and complicated history with the incarceration of Black people. But a coalition of current and former state officials is working to change that. 'There's a direct through line to the practices of yesterday to what we can do today to rectify how we're handling children in our prison system,' Maryland state Sen. William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery) said during a visit to the cemetery Thursday. 'I think this history grounds all of us in understanding what our predecessors did and our obligation as leaders today to rectify that practice.' Standing among the abandoned gravestones, Smith, the chair of the Maryland Senate's Judicial Proceedings Committee, and former Department of Juvenile Services secretary Vincent Schiraldi outlined their hopes for the grounds — and the racial reconciliation they believe should follow. Already, an application for a roadside marker is pending before the Maryland Department of Transportation to acknowledge where the state created the segregated House of Reformation in 1870. A separate application for a $250,000 state grant has been submitted to the Department of Planning to help pay for rehabilitating the cemetery site. More than that, though, Smith and Schiraldi said, they want the state to reckon with the injustices of the past through action in the present. Maryland ranks fourth in the nation in its percentage of people incarcerated for crimes they committed as children. Aside from Alabama, the state charges more children as adults per capita than any other in the nation. And in Maryland, Black children are seven times as likely to be charged as adults than their White peers, officials have said. Schiraldi, who resigned from Democratic Gov. Wes Moore's Cabinet last month amid tension over juvenile crime in the state, said it is critical that Maryland rectify the wrongs that lawmakers and political leaders enabled for decades. 'We have to make sure we don't repeat the mistakes of the past,' Schiraldi said Thursday. 'They were doing some things in the past that were unacceptable and despicable, like segregating kids by race and treating the kids of color more poorly and burying them in a potter's field. But at least they were taking them out of the adult prisons of the day.' Smith said he will again introduce a bill during next year's legislative session to change a law that automatically sends young people accused of one of 33 offenses to the adult court system. Smith's bill would shorten that list to include only the most violent offenses, including murder and rape. Spokespeople for the department and Moore did not answer questions Thursday about whether the administration plans to back Smith's legislation, which the Department of Juvenile Services previously supported under Schiraldi. The DJS spokesperson said that the department's research is 'powerful work that is vital to telling the agency's often uncomfortable history' and that officials under acting secretary Betsy Fox Tolentino are 'evaluating steps forward for the research' into the abandoned cemetery. Moore's spokesperson, who did not address questions about the cemetery, said in a statement that the administration will continue to 'preserve the history of this state, uplift the stories of our people, ensure Marylanders are aware of the state's long and often complicated history, and work to repair generations of decisions that negatively impacted Marylanders.' The Maryland General Assembly established the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children some 20 years after lawmakers had established a similar facility — a 'House of Refuge' — for White children. State lawmakers wrote back then that Black children were being held in the state's adult penitentiary, some as young as 5 years old and 'so small as to be able to creep through the prison bars.' Established as a privately run corporation in rural Prince George's County, the reform school would eventually include a sprawling campus with a farm on which the children worked, a two-story factory, a hospital, classrooms and living quarters, according to documents from the Maryland Historical Trust. About 250 Black children and teens were admitted annually, according to state archives. Boys were sent to the reform school for 'begging, vagrancy, criminal acts, or incorrigibility,' researchers wrote in state documents. The House of Reformation was marked by years of complaints about deplorable conditions, prompting the state to take control in 1937. The facility was desegregated by order of Maryland's high court in July 1961, seven years after the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision. Evidence that modern state officials were aware of the cemetery dates back to at least the 1970s, when the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission surveyed the property. A comprehensive study of the land and cemetery was conducted by the state in 2009, when historians documented the site with maps and photos. Then last year, Schiraldi and his staff began a project to research and document the history of the DJS with the hope of educating the staff on the legacy of juvenile justice in the state and promoting a sense of stewardship over the direction the agency was headed. During a tour of the facility grounds, led by a longtime department employee who had become the unofficial historian at Cheltenham, he asked officials if they had ever heard of the old cemetery. They had not, so they crossed the road and traipsed through the woods, searching for an hour between trees and through overgrowth for the gravestones before giving up. DJS staff later contacted the Maryland Historical Trust, which provided a cemetery map created during their 2009 survey of the area. Last fall, DJS officials and staff — this time accompanied by two justice-involved teens and their parents — ventured back into the woods. They found the tombstone for William Jones and the grave markers for three other boys: Anthon Jones, 11; Asbury Brown, 15; and a 16-year-old whose last name was Washington. They were overcome by the sight, said Marc Schindler, Schiraldi's former chief of staff. They gathered in a circle, and one of the teens' mothers asked if she could pray. As they left the woods that day, Schindler said, one of the teens told him the state needed to act. These children didn't deserve to be cast aside without recognition, the teen said, just because they were Black and imprisoned. That is when state officials initiated their bid for restoration grant money. Along the way, the DJS came across an online repository of death certificates for boys who died at the facility — a trove of documents that had been discovered and uploaded by a woman named Rosemary Clark. Clark, 65, who grew up in Prince George's County, had developed a hobby of cemetery and genealogy research. While sifting through death certificates in 2021, she came across one for a young boy who had died at the House of Reformation. It struck her, she said, because the child was listed as an 'inmate.' In the course of additional research, she found another death certificate from the House of Reformation, and then another. Initially, she said in an interview, she thought there had been some kind of illness outbreak at the facility. She kept digging, though, and found tales in old newspaper archives of abuse and neglect. To date, she has found more than 100 death certificates for boys who died at the House of Reformation between 1898, when Maryland first started requiring death certificates, and 1930. 'They can't be made whole,' Clark said, 'but they at least deserve some respect in death that they didn't get in life.' Barmas Benton turned off his riding lawn mower and walked into the woods Thursday, joining the search for Cheltenham's lost cemetery, which he had learned about in October. Benton, a groundskeeper for Cheltenham Veterans Cemetery, has lived in Prince George's County since childhood, once attending Sunday school at a building on the grounds of the detention facility. He had known for decades about the school there, recalling the alerts neighbors would receive about children who had escaped. 'Look at the ages over there,' Benton said, standing among the graves. 'They're all under 18, and some of them were used for child labor.' 'It was kind of like they were abusing the system to get these kids to help support the economy in this area for the farms,' he continued. 'No, slavery wasn't around anymore. This was a new form of slavery.' Smith first learned about the cemetery a few weeks ago. But Thursday was the first time he had visited. 'It's a somber discovery,' Smith said, as he read the dates on the tombstones. 'To see this and just think about how people were treated and all the lost opportunities, lost futures that we're looking at.'
Black America Web
15-07-2025
- General
- Black America Web
10 Essentials Every Student Needs for the First Day of School
10 Essentials Every Student Needs for the First Day of School Whether you're stepping into your first college class, returning to your high school hallway, or just trying to make a strong impression after summer break, showing up prepared on Day One sets the tone for the entire school year. From staying organized to staying charged, here are 10 must-have essentials every student should have in their backpack before the bell rings. RELATED: 10 Books On Black History That Should Be Taught In Schools Right Now 10 Essentials Every Student Needs for the First Day of School was originally published on 1. A Durable, Comfortable Backpack This is your mobile command center. Look for something with padded straps, multiple compartments, and enough space for books, tech, and snacks. Waterproof? Even better. 2. Notebooks or a Binder with Loose Leaf Paper Don't rely on teachers handing everything out digitally. Having a clean notebook for each class—or a well-organized binder—helps you start off strong. 3. Pens, Pencils, and Highlighters It sounds basic, but you'd be surprised how many students forget these. Keep a small pencil pouch stocked with your writing tools, plus a few extras for when your classmate inevitably asks, 'Can I borrow one?' 4. Tech Charger or Portable Power Bank Between school apps, music, and last-minute assignment uploads, your phone and laptop/tablet will need backup. A slim power bank is clutch when outlets are nowhere to be found. 5. Planner or Digital Calendar App Planner or Digital Calendar App 6. Reusable Water Bottle Hydration = energy and focus. A sleek, spill-proof bottle keeps you refreshed during long lectures or high school block periods. 7. Headphones or Earbuds Whether it's zoning out during lunch, tuning in to study music, or watching a quick tutorial, having quality earbuds (preferably noise-canceling) can help you stay locked in. 8. Folders or an Accordion File Don't let your syllabus, handouts, or permission slips get crumpled in the bottom of your bag. A few folders or one expandable file can help you keep subjects organized from the jump. 9. Mini Hygiene Kit A few essentials like gum, lotion, hand sanitizer, lip balm, and tissues go a long way. Throw in deodorant or wipes if you're heading straight to sports or after-school activities. 10. A Positive Mindset Not everything you need fits in your bag. Show up with confidence, curiosity, and an open mind. The first day is your chance to reset, reintroduce, and remind yourself that you're capable of greatness.
The Guardian
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Clovis Salmon obituary
'I've always believed in the power of stories to bring people together, to bridge divides, and to create unity – no matter our race or background,' said Clovis Salmon on accepting a lifetime achievement award at the National Diversity awards in Liverpool last year. Salmon, who has died aged 98, was regarded as the UK's first Black documentary film-maker, and chronicled life in his neighbourhood – Brixton, in south London – over several decades. He is said to have taken 50,000ft of documentary footage of the community from the 1950s up to the present. Recorded at a time when many of the UK's established institutions, libraries, museums and archives, were not allocating space to the historical perspectives of marginalised communities, Salmon's films offer a valuable cultural history of the area as well as a unique viewpoint of Black London that was often missing from the mainstream narrative. His footage featured in notable documentaries for the BBC and the British Film Institute, with several reels now preserved at the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton. His lens recorded both the mundane and the monumental – from children in woollen bonnets playing hopscotch in the street to the aftermath of the 1981 Brixton riots. Sometimes grainy but distinctly mesmerising, the footage captures a neighbourhood in flux: how shops and businesses adapted to the area's growing Caribbean community; the bustle and charm of Brixton market in the 60s, complete with street pastors urging people to repent while they stocked up on saltfish; and the much later onset of gentrification. In 2021, his documentaries were part of the Decolonising the Lens series at the Barbican arts centre in London, and in 2024 he was appointed OBE for his services to culture and the Black community. Salmon, who was entirely self-taught, got into film-making by accident. A devout Christian, he started filming services in 1959 at his local church, the Glad Tidings Church on Somerleyton Road, Brixton, where he served as a deacon. Baptisms, christenings, weddings, funerals, Salmon would record the whole gamut of human experience (at first on a Chinon Master Super 8 video camera and later adapting to new technology), screening films to his congregation on a Eumig projector in the winter months. Requests followed and, in time, he refined his hobby – his bicycle providing the perfect transport and vantage point from which to film his neighbourhood. As his skills developed, he took on the role of citizen journalist, adding social commentary and interviews, and providing the Black community with a much-needed voice. Salmon was also known for his expertise as a bicycle engineer. He spent 54 years in the trade, and was described as 'the greatest wheel builder' by his friends at Brixton Cycles. According to Salmon, a wheel built by him could support the weight of three men. In 2022 Lambeth council installed a bicycle monument to 'Sam the Wheels' in the front garden of his home in Railton Road. The youngest of 12 children, Salmon was born in Nain, in the rural parish of Saint Elizabeth, Jamaica, to Emily (nee Watson), a seamstress, farmer and gardener, and Tom Salmon, a farmer. Six of his older siblings died at birth and his father died when he was very young. He attended Nain high school until the age of 16 – and would help his mother out on their smallholding, accompanying her to the local market. Salmon credited his mother, a Sunday school teacher and astute businesswoman, with instilling in him his strong Christian faith and ambition. Before leaving Jamaica, he married his childhood sweetheart, Daisy, and she would later follow him to the UK. Prompted by the dire economic situation in Jamaica, in 1954 Salmon answered the call for postwar labour in the UK. He crossed the Atlantic on the RMS Ascania and arrived in Plymouth on 28 November, joining his cousin and other family members in Brixton. Like the majority of those from the Caribbean who travelled during that time, he was a citizen of the UK and Colonies, and held a British Commonwealth passport, but he remembered the 'mother country' being less than welcoming. Although he had run his own bicycle repair shop in Nain, initially Salmon struggled to get work as a mechanic in the UK. He took a six-month apprenticeship at the Claud Butler company but work there dried up. After a short period on a building site, he was employed for a decade at Dayton Cycles and then the Holdsworth cycle company, the latter for 25 years. At the time, the colour bar was pervasive; when he attended the local church, the English vicar took him aside and told him not to come back because his members would leave. Salmon's films document the church's important role for the Caribbean community, who built their own places of worship and social spaces after being excluded from English churches, pubs and clubs. His film The Great Conflict of Somerleyton Road captured the 1977 demolition of the Jesus Saves Pentecostal Church despite that building's significance to the local community. The plot was transformed by Lambeth council into what locals now term the 'Barrier Block', Southwyck House, with many families also forced to sell their homes to make way for the development. The 70s and early 80s were marked by a series of racist murders and high-profile miscarriages of justice, and tensions were high between the police and the community. In April 1981 Operation Swamp targeted Brixton, giving police unfettered 'stop and search' powers. Such provocative policing led to an uprising and the police lost control of the area over three days from 10 April. Salmon stated in a 2008 interview: 'Black and white youths were fighting with the police and petrol bombs were being thrown everywhere. No one on Railton Road felt safe and my place was evacuated that Friday night when the riots kicked off.' Despite the dangers, he travelled on his bicycle, his camera secreted in his jacket, documenting the aftermath of the riots and the community's views. His film captures the rubble-strewn streets and the burnt-out shell of the George pub, targeted by rioters after years of racial discrimination by the landlord. When he interviews a passerby, the anger is visceral: 'Jobs, money, National Front and all the rest, we'd just had enough, so we just explode.' In 1980, after raising five children, Salmon and his first wife divorced. He married Erma Bailey in 1983; she died in 1997. In 2000, he married for a third time, to Delores. Recently, he reflected on his life: 'I've worked tirelessly to film and document moments that others might have overlooked or forgotten … When I see how my work has inspired younger generations to take pride in their heritage, continue their fight for justice, and tell their own stories, it fills me with joy.' He is survived by Delores, his children, Valerie, Trevor, Terry, Sharon and Sandra, and 10 grandchildren. Clovis Constantine Salmon, documentary film-maker and bicycle engineer, born 13 April 1927; died 18 June 2025
New York Times
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘The Gilded Age' Enriches Its Portrait of Black High Society
The air felt different as I sat across from Phylicia Rashad, Audra McDonald and Denée Benton. I was lifted simply by being with these women, three generations of Broadway royalty. (Of course, as the former Clair Huxtable, Rashad qualifies as TV royalty as well.) Now they are together on 'The Gilded Age,' the HBO drama about late 19th-century New York City and the old-money elites, arrivistes and workers who live and clash there. I was initially worried about the show when it debuted in 2022. As a long-term fan of the creator Julian Fellowes's more homogenous hit 'Downton Abbey,' I feared this American counterpart would similarly overlook the racial dynamics of its era. But I was pleasantly surprised by the nuance of the character Peggy Scott (Benton), an aspiring journalist and secretary for Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and a member of Brooklyn's Black upper-middle class. An early version of Peggy had the character posing as a domestic servant to gain access to Agnes. But Benton and the show's historical consultant, Erica Armstrong Dunbar, pushed for a more multifaceted exploration of the lives of Black New Yorkers, who often interacted with Manhattan's white elite even as they lived separately. (Dunbar and I were colleagues at Rutgers University.) This season, 'The Gilded Age' has its most diverse and in-depth portrayal of Black high society yet, often pitting Peggy's mother, Dorothy (McDonald), against the aristocratic Elizabeth Kirkland (Rashad), who arrives on the show on Sunday. Like other wealthy mothers on this show, Elizabeth spends most of her time trying to control the marital fate of her children and discriminating against other families, like the Scotts, that she believes to be socially inferior. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
