North of the Color Line: Migration and Black Resistance in Canada, 1870-1955

3. Fighting the Empire: Race, War, and Mobilization

f f chapter three Fighting the Empire Race, War, and Mobilization The climate had dramatically changed for black railroaders in Canada by World War I and forced a more urgent appeal for the federal government to halt the advancement of Jim Crow in industry and public life. African Canadians feared that, if left to their devices, employers would capitalize on the distraction occasioned by the war and exploit their workers with even greater impunity. John A. Robinson, the oscp’s leader and its chief architect, rallied black railwaymen in defense of their rights, citing the critical import of laborbased radicalism. For Robinson and other black leaders, the Great War era made clear that Jim Crow practices could quickly expand beyond the realm of labor and immigration legislation. As a result, African Canadians joined forces in defiance of violations of their rights, marshaling the language of manhood and citizenship when making their case with federal bureaucrats, employers, and those blacks in Canada new to protest politics. While John A. Robinson faced down the specter of Jim Crow in Winnipeg ’s stockyards, Toronto and Halifax sleeping car porters launched their attack on segregation in another sector of the federal government—the Department of Militia and Defence. J. R. Whitney formed the vanguard of that o√ensive with his African Canadian newspaper the Canadian Observer. Whitney and his supporters argued that the Great War presented African Canadians with an opportunity to prove that they were dedicated citizens capable of upholding the British Empire in its time of need; convincing Prime Minister Borden and the Department of Militia and Defence proved their first of many fights. Fighting the Empire 101 The Great War changed Canadian society and African Canadian communities in particular. Black Canadians immediately organized in defense of their country and their right to work. Because of their highly mobile lifestyles and their connections to Canadian urban centers, sleeping car porters quickly emerged as the logical agents of that political mobilization. Porters created various institutions—a railway union, a black Canadian press, various racial uplift associations—that became national organizations almost overnight by enabling rapid dissemination of information during the war era. These infrastructures, initially created to make military mobilization possible, also made postwar African Canadian radicalism viable. The Great War gave birth to a new radicalized transnational race consciousness and an infrastructure to make that radicalism manifest at home and abroad. Moreover , black railwaymen who joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force applied the defensive strategies they had learned on the rails to their military service overseas. Others who manned the rails in Canada throughout the Great War defended their communities from violent labor protest, xenophobic attacks, and postwar assaults on black civil rights. african canadians defined their citizenship rights during the second decade of the twentieth century as the right to employment and the right to military service. For blacks in Canada, who by the dawn of the Great War had reached adulthood in record numbers, work and service in the most important conflict of the time quickly emerged as most pressing issues. As talk of war intensified in the early part of that decade and African Canadians joined that debate, rumors of Jim Crow practices in the militia surfaced with a frequency that resulted in the prime minister receiving scores of letters from black Canadians eager for a clarification on Canada’s enlistment policy. As Arthur Alexander, a sleeping car porter, explained, ‘‘Prime Minister Borden , the coloured people of Canada want to know why they are not allowed to enlist in the Canadian militia’’ and why they were ‘‘refused for no other apparent reason than their color.’’∞ When that failed, African Canadians appealed directly to the governor-general, the queen’s representative in Canada . John T. Richards, an outspoken opponent of Canada’s antiblack immigration laws, wrote the governor-general threatening to expose Canada’s Jim Crow policies to other Imperial Expeditionary Forces, stressing that it ‘‘is certainly highly insulting to the Colored people here . . . to not be allowed to serve their King simply because they faces are dark.’’ Richards intimated that ‘‘some of my Colored friends have been suggesting that we ought to protest to the Allies’’ and expose Canadian segregation to the world.≤ 102 Fighting the Empire Another black Canadian, George Morton, informed the minister of militia and defence, Sam Hughes, that recruitment o≈cers committed their racism to paper, as black volunteers ‘‘have...