The Times
The 1871 Census lists Mary Ball as a school teacher in Chester.
PRIVATE COLLECTION
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On stage at the Ballroom of the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax, circa 1930, are (left to right) Charles Adams, father of legendary Nova Scotian jazz musician Bucky Adams; Clyde Jemmott, principal of Africville School; Frank Adams, father of Wayne Adams, the first African Nova Scotian MLA; Maurice Earle, father of Gordon Earle, the first African Nova Scotian MP; Helena White, sister of Portia White and mother of Donald Oliver, the first African Nova Scotian appointed to the Senate.
money to bring their loved ones to Nova Scotia. The community center is now home to the UNIA Community Cultural Museum. Fredrick Hamilton was an active member of the UNIA. Hamilton had immigrated to Sydney from Tobago. He went to Halifax to attend Dalhousie University where he earned his Bachelor of Arts and Law Degree. He returned to Sydney to practice law in 1923. A few years later, Hamilton started a monthly newspaper in Sydney called The Nova Scotia Gleaner. Like The Advocate, The Gleaner was published to “unify the colored people of Nova Scotia”. The first issue appeared in August, 1929. The Gleaner only lasted a few issues and was likely the victim of the stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression. In 1950, Hamilton became the first African Canadian awarded the title King’s Council (KC). Many new immigrants, like Isaac Phills from the island of St. Vincent, would serve
in the war and later find work in the steel mills of Sydney. Phills became a community activist and raised a large family, many of whom attended university. Isaac Phills was the first African Nova Scotian invested into the Order of Canada. In 1921, Bishop George Alexander McGuire, an immigrant from Antigua, organized St. Philip’s African Orthodox Church in Whitney Pier. St. Philip’s was the only African Orthodox parish in Canada and became the focal point for the black community in the Sydney area. In 1940, the Venerable Archpriest George A. Francis began his distinguished forty-one year service to St. Philip’s and the surrounding community. Reverend Francis was born in Cuba and had studied theology in New York City before moving to Nova Scotia. His daughter, The Honourable Mayann Francis, would become the CEO of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission and the first black Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia.
Educator/Community Activist
Theologian/Scholar/Educator
Dr. Geraldine Browning
Rev Dr. Peter J. Paris
East Preston/Gibson Woods
New Glasgow
Life-long community activist, teacher and nurse. Founding Member and past-President of the Black Cultural Society. Instrumental in re-opening Gibson Woods United Baptist Church. Recipient of numerous awards and honours including a Doctor of Humanities from Acadia University.
Professor Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary and a Visiting Professor at Boston University School of Theology. Named Alumnus of the Year, University of Chicago Divinity School, 1995 and Distinguished Alumnus of the Year, Acadia University, Wolfville, 2012.
The Halifax Colored Citizens Improvement League was a social action group started in 1932 by Beresford Augustus Husbands. Husbands was born in Barbados in 1883 and immigrated to Halifax in 1900. He attended Joseph Howe School and later married Iris Lucas of Lucasville, Nova Scotia. Husbands was a successful businessman who had started the Citizens Improvement League to help remove the barriers to education and employment for African Nova Scotians. Around the same time, a small group of about twenty African Nova Scotians in Halifax, led by Dr. F.B. Holder, a black doctor born in British Guyana, started to meet regularly at the Gerrish Street Hall to discuss interests of mutual concern. The group formed the Colored Education Centre and often invited the leaders of industry, education, politics and religion to speak to their group. It was the members of the Colored Education Center and the Halifax Colored
Politician/Senator
of African Nova Scotians
Citizens Improvement League who took the initiative in forming the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NSAACP). When the AUBA, lead by Reverend W.P. Oliver and the formidable Mrs. Pearleen Oliver gave their endorsement to the NSAACP, the Association instantly gained a provincewide network for membership. The Viola Desmond Appeal would be the newlyformed Association’s first major challenge. Despite the similar sounding names, the NSAACP was not affiliated with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the United States. The NAACP was formed in the aftermath of the race riots and lynching which occurred in Illinois in 1908. In 1909, a group of activists, lead by Mary White Ovington, met in New York City to organize a “large and powerful body of citizens” to fight for equal rights. Almost from the beginning, the National Association used the courts to fight for social justice. Though initially a multi-race organization, by mid-century, the NAACP was almost exclusively African-American. By 1940, the Association had hired a young lawyer named Thurgood Marshall who systematically set out to reverse the Jim Crow laws and the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine that was entrenched in many State laws. Marshall and the NAACP went on to win many landmark victories in the U.S. Supreme Court and their efforts culminated with the passing of the American Civil Rights Act in 1964. Thurgood Marshall would become the first African-American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. Though the Nova Scotia Association worked to fight against discrimination and for social justice, education was the cornerstone of the organization. Unlike the United States, there were few laws that enforced segregation in Nova Scotia. Segregation was by custom rather than by law. Legal challenges were expensive to mount and depended on the availability and willingness of white lawyers. It would be 1951 before the third African Nova Scotian lawyer, George Davis from Halifax, graduated from Dalhousie Law School. Athlete/Commissioned Officer
Ted Upshaw Don Oliver, Q.C.
Windsor Plains
Wolfville
First African Nova Scotian Commissioned Officer and first Inspector in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Named to Acadia University’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2012.
First African Nova Scotian appointed to the Senate.