HARRIET TUBMAN SEPTEMBER 17-1849

 

HARRIET TUBMAN SEPTEMBER 17-1849 

Murphy Browne © September 17, 2020 

HARRIET TUBMAN SEPTEMBER 17-1849 

 

On September 17, 1849, Harriet Tubman and two of her brothers, Ben and Henry, fled to freedom from a plantation in Maryland, USA. Harriet Tubman whose story has been told in numerous books written for adults and children is one of the most well-known names in African American history. Her name is also well-known in African Canadian history as Ontario, Canada was her ultimate destination following her escape from enslavement in the USA. On September 17, 1849 when Tubman and her brothers fled, the enslavement of Africans in Canada had been abolished for 15 years (August 1, 1834.) Tubman made Canada her permanent home for several years following the 1850 passing of the “Fugitive Slave Act.” On September 18, 1850, “The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850” was passed by the United States Congress and required that any enslaved African in the USA who was captured after fleeing, be returned to their “owners,” even if they were in a “free state” in the USA. Abolitionists nicknamed the “Fugitive Slave Act” the "Bloodhound Bill," because of the dogs that were used to track down enslaved Africans who fled their enslavement.  

 

Harriet Ross Tubman, born Araminta Ross, was born on the plantation of Edward Brodess in Maryland, the child of an enslaved African couple. Her mother, Harriet Green was “owned” by Mary Pattison Brodess and her father, Ben Ross was “owned” by Anthony Thomson. The law at that time meant that Araminta and her siblings were the “property” of Mary Pattison Brodess. When Mary Pattison Brodess died, her son Edward Brodess, inherited Harriet Green and her children. In 1844 Araminta married a free African American man, John Tubman but she remained the “property” of Edward Brodess. On March 7, 1849, Edward Brodess, died leaving an estate that was deeply in debt and three of Araminta’s sisters (Linah, Soph and Mariah Ritty) were sold. Realising the very real danger that they might be next on the auction block, Araminta, Ben and Henry fled six months later, on September 17, 1849. The newspaper “The Cambridge Democrat” published a $300 reward for the return of Harriet and her two brothers. Harriet travelled 90 miles to Pennsylvania, a free state, using the secret codes of the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Araminta, using her new name, Harriet Tubman, returned to Maryland to guide her niece, Kessiah and Kessiah’s two children to freedom. A few months later she returned to Baltimore and helped her youngest brother Moses to escape. In 1851, Harriet Tubman returned for her husband John Tubman who refused to leave because by then he had remarried. Tubman lived in St. Catharines, Ontario, from 1851, making Canada her home and the base of her rescue operations. She rescued her parents and other family members, taking them to St. Catharines where they would be safe from slave catchers. In 1860 she made her final foray into the USA to rescue her remaining sister Rachel, but she was too late. On that final trip Tubman rescued Stephen and Maria Ennals, their 3 children including a 3-month-old infant and another unnamed couple. Tubman returned to the USA in 1861, at the beginning of the American Civil War where she worked as a cook, as a spy, a scout and a nurse. 

 

Tubman helped to recruit formerly enslaved African American men to fight in the army during the Civil War. In 1863 Tubman became the first woman to lead an assault during the Civil War in the Combahee River Raid where more than 750 enslaved Africans were freed. 1865, when the Civil War ended, Tubman returned to the USA permanently, making her home in Auburn, New York.  

 

Despite the work that Tubman did during the Civil War, she was never paid by the government. She served as an agent of the Union Army, as a nurse and in various other positions which entitled her to a pension but the government reneged on that agreement. As an African American veteran she was further insulted during a train ride to New York in 1869, when the conductor demanded that she move from her seat into the baggage car. She refused to move and presented the government-issued papers that entitled her to ride in the car. The conductor swore at her and tried to remove her, when she resisted he called two other passengers for help. During the struggle she was physically assaulted, her arm was broken and she was thrown into the baggage car.  

 

Harriet Tubman never received her well-earned pension, but she continued her advocacy and activism and in1898 she became involved in the women’s suffrage movement. In 1903 she donated her home to the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church in Auburn to be converted into a home for the “aged and indigent colored people.” Harriet Tubman, abolitionist and famous conductor on the Underground Railroad who risked her life for her own freedom and the freedom of hundreds of enslaved Africans, transitioned to the ancestral realm on March 10, 1913 at 93 years old. She was buried at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York. Her memory is honoured by the Thompson AME Zion Church with an annual pilgrimage to her gravesite. 

 

Murphy Browne © September 17, 2020 

CANADIAN LABOUR DAY HISTORY

 Murphy Browne © Thursday, September 2, 2010 

 

CANADIAN LABOUR DAY HISTORY 

 

“The marshals had their hands full pulling together the three thousand workers who converged on Market Square in London, Ontario on 3 September 1894. It was the first nationally recognized Labour Day in Canada, and the local labour movement was out in force. Eventually, the first union contingent headed off down the city’s main streets in the blazing noonday sun. Leading the way was a group of seventy-five butchers on horseback, who set the tone of respectable craftsmanship with their crisply white shirts and hats and clean baskets on their arms.” 

 

Excerpt from “The Worker's Festival: A History of Labour Day in Canada written by Craig Heron and Steven Penfold” published 2005 

 

Labour Day in Canada is celebrated on the first Monday in September with a national holiday and a parade by mostly unionized workers. According to “The Canadian Encyclopedia,” the celebration of Labour Day in Canada came as a result of a group of unionized workers (Toronto Printers Union) demanding the right to work less than 12 hours a day. Apparently, this alarmed their bosses who were horrified that their workers wanted to work a mere nine hours a day. The workers had petitioned their employers in 1869 asking for a reduction of their daily work hours. By 1872 the workers were demanding a nine hour work day. The supporters of what became known as the “Nine Hour Movement” went on strike (March 25, 1872) and George Brown, owner of the Globe newspaper (forerunner of today’s Globe and Mail) not only brought in replacement workers but he also sued the Toronto Printers Union. 

 

According to the law in Canada at that time (1872), a law which dated back to 1792, union activity was considered a criminal offence. The 24 members of the strike committee were arrested and jailed. On April 14, 1872 a demonstration was held to show solidarity with a parade of approximately 2000 workers marching through the city, led by two marching bands. A supportive crowd swelled the number to 10,000 by the time the parade reached its destination at Queen's Park. 

 

The struggle of the workers caught the sympathetic attention of Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald and on June 14, 1872 his government passed a Trade Union Act, which legalized and protected union activity. The parades held in support of the Nine-Hour Movement and the printers' strike led to an annual celebration and on July 23, 1894 the government of Prime Minister Sir John Thompson passed a law making Labour Day a national holiday. 

 

Although this history of Labour Day refers to the struggle of “workers” the labour movement was not diverse or inclusive. In “The Worker's Festival: A History of Labour Day in Canada Craig Heron and Steven Penfold” write: “By the early 1900s, the absence of the less skilled and non-union workers meant that Labour Day parades consisted preponderantly of white anglophones and francophones. There was rarely any space for Africans and native Canadians or for the newcomers from Asia and southern and eastern Europe who increasingly filled the jobs at the bottom of the occupational ladder and were rarely unionized before the First World War.” 

 

Racialized people had been a part of Canada’s labour force for centuries, including the native Canadian’s contribution to the fur trade which enriched European traders, enslaved Africans who laboured without pay (1628-1834) and the Chinese who built the railroad with massive loss of life. Yet as Heron and Penfold have documented there was blatantly racist exclusion of these workers from the celebration of Labour Day in those early days. Thankfully the Labour Day parade has come a long way since the days that Heron and Penfold describe in here in “The Worker's Festival: A History of Labour Day in Canada”: “On the few occasions when people of colour appeared in these marches they were presented as curiosities not fellow workers. Plumbers’ unions sometimes used black youngsters as comic accents to the gleaming white-enamel fixtures on their float. In one case in Toronto, the tableau was an older woman trying to scrub the “dirt” off a black boy.” 

 

Sadly, even though we have come a long way since African Canadians were considered “curiosities” and used as “comic accents” in Labour Day parades we still have a long way to go to see racialized people in leadership positions in the Labour movement. A look at the leaders of the Labour movement will quickly show that the diversity of the workers who attend the Labour Day parade on September 6, 2010 is not reflected in the leadership of the Labour movement which is still overwhelmingly white and male. It is therefore hardly surprising that we are not hearing voices from the leadership of the Canadian labour movement raised against the Canadian government’s attack on Employment Equity. 

 

Murphy Browne © Thursday, September 2, 2010 

 

REOPENING SCHOOLS 2020

 

Murphy Browne © August 27-2020 

 

"The Ontario government's 'plan' for reopening schools essentially amounts, in most elementary and middle school grades, to sending 30 students and a teacher back into a room for 6 hours/day with poor to no ventilation and probably only enough space for 30 cm of distancing between desks. This is shameful and demonstrates a reckless and disturbing lack of care for the health and safety of our children, teachers, school staff, and communities."  

 

Excerpt from online petition, "Ontario Demands Better: Reduce Class Sizes to Keep Schools and Communities Safe" written by Kelly Iggers, teacher-librarian with the Toronto District School Board 

In August, following the Provincial government’s July 30, announcement that they were reopening schools on September 8, an online petition, "Ontario Demands Better: Reduce Class Sizes to Keep Schools and Communities Safe," was written by Kelly Iggers, a teacher-librarian with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB.) The reason the petition was written included the spectre of overcrowded classrooms with poor ventilation. The Ford government expected parents to send their children into classrooms where there would be no space for social distancing. From the document “Updated COVID-19:Guidance for School Reopening” published by Sick Kids Hospital, experts on July 29, 2020, advised: “Addressing structural deficiencies, such as large class sizes, small classrooms and poor ventilation, must be part of any plan to reopen schools.” The experts also advised that: “Smaller class sizes should be a priority strategy as it will aid in physical distancing and reduce potential spread from any index case.” The document was created by a core group of healthcare workers at The Hospital for Sick Children and Unity Health Toronto, including those with expertise in paediatrics, infectious diseases, infection prevention and control, school health, psychiatry and mental health. 

 Parents across Ontario expressed dissatisfaction with the Ford Government’s plans for the reopening of school for the 2020-2021 school year. There were no concrete plans to ensure that all classrooms in the schools across Ontario would be safe spaces for students and staff dealing with the pandemic. Iggers in her petition noted: “Addressing structural deficiencies, such as large class sizes, small classrooms and poor ventilation, must be part of any plan to reopen schools.”  

 

Parents and community members were outraged at the piecemeal “back to school” plans of the Ontario Conservatives. They thought that the details of the plan were inadequate, especially the plans for elementary schools, as the government wanted to retain the original class sizes. The thought of elementary classrooms with as many as 30 students, and dodgy ventilation did not sit well with parents. The Ontario Principals’ Council, which represents 5,000 elementary- and secondary-school leaders, said that all class sizes should be limited to ensure two metres between students, and for kindergarten classes to be capped at 15 students. The unions that represent more than 190,000 teachers and education workers, said that the Ontario government’s back-to-school plan violates occupational health and safety legislation. The government is now allowing the boards of education to spend from their reserve funds, from their operating budgets, to hire more teachers and find new spaces for classes.  

 

The TDSB interim director Carlene Jackson noted that the $131-million reserve is set aside for “future obligations” such as benefits and long-term disability insurance. She said it would “not be prudent or good financial management” to use a large amount of the reserve funds to cover the entire cost of small classes. With just a few days left before the possible return to class of Ontario’s two million students, the government has not assured or ensured that enough has been done to make the return to school safe for the returning students and staff. As of Thursday, August 27, more than 242,144 Ontarians, including parents, grandparents, students, teachers, school staff, and community members had signed the "Ontario Demands Better: Reduce Class Sizes to Keep Schools and Communities Safe" petition.  

 

The Ford government would do well to heed the advice of Kelly Iggers who wrote the petition. She wrote that “At full capacity, schools and classrooms are not physically big enough to accommodate the physical-distancing measures that are key to preventing the spread of the coronavirus. Schools should plan to reopen for in-person learning in November. In September and October, most students should continue to learn online, although these two months should also be used to retrofit schools and field test the physical return to school for limited numbers of elementary and high school students.”  

 

Murphy Browne © August 27-2020