bossymarmalade: a maple leaf frozen in the rideau canal (all tucked away down there)
miss maggie ([personal profile] bossymarmalade) wrote2009-01-14 09:03 pm
Entry tags:

our blackness is buried

The first thing that confused me when we moved to Vancouver, after six years of childhood in a country brown and black before anything else, was the absence of black people. There were brown people -- they weren't like me, and lots of the time didn't consider me a real Indian -- but they were there, at least.

I've been here for twenty years now.

Three years ago I learned for the first time about Hogan's Alley, the black community in Vancouver. Chicken houses run by women as their husbands worked as porters on the Canadian Pacific Railway, the city's only black church, the lesbian presence unacknowledged by the white hipster queer girls I talk to in class every week.

Hogan's Alley, destroyed in order to make way for the Georgia Viaduct (the Georgia what? A project that never happened) and with its erasure the disappearance of black people from my city. Before I came here or was even born, but the absence is still disorienting.

Three hours ago I learned for the first time about Priceville, a black community in Ontario. There were black people there since the 1800s, cultivating land and building houses that they were never allowed to legally own; it didn't take long for white residents to drive them all out of the town. And then in the 1930s Bill Reid, a white farmer, ploughed over the black cemetery and planted potatoes there.

His stepdaughter blandly recalls that they were good potatoes. An old man talks about using a piece of a tombstone found near "the darkie schoolhouse" as a home plate for baseball games. More tombstones, they think, are in Bill Reid's basement, used as flagstones on the dirt floor and poured over with concrete since then.

The corner of the Reid field that's since been rededicated and fenced off isn't even the whole cemetery. The rest of the bodies aren't there. They and their tombstones are under the road.

They are under the road.

I drove home on the long dark UBC road (unceded Musqueam territory, all of it) and all I could think about was the erasure of black communities in Canada, and our silence about it. The people out East who narrow their eyes at dark West Indians and the people here in the West who snarl at newly-arrived Somalians. I don't only mean white people.

We don't know anything about our own damn history.

- speakers for the dead: NFB documentary on Priceville -
..the remyth project..
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[identity profile] tallycola.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 05:57 am (UTC)(link)
The most disturbing part of that story for me was the tombstone-as-home-plate. Yikes.

[identity profile] canellaphile.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 06:29 am (UTC)(link)
It's interesting in a terrible way, and I'm actually really impressed that you have uncovered this much of a forgotten history. I got chills when I read there are graves under the road. Oh and...is anyone else thinking Supernatural? Or is it just me.
deepad: black silhouette of woman wearing blue turban against blue background (Default)

[personal profile] deepad 2009-01-15 08:01 am (UTC)(link)
This, and the last post was so painfully beautiful. THANK YOU.

[identity profile] beachlass.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 01:58 pm (UTC)(link)
And Africville (http://archives.cbc.ca/society/racism/topics/96/) in Nova Scotia.

[identity profile] chootoy.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 02:01 pm (UTC)(link)
It's .. I just .. words just can't ...

[identity profile] kadymae.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 02:36 pm (UTC)(link)
Really well done. The line about the good potatoes really corkscrewed my spine.

[identity profile] florence-craye.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 02:57 pm (UTC)(link)
This is really beautiful... gave me chills. *loves*
ext_2721: original art by james jean (jamesjean.com) (Default)

[identity profile] skywardprodigal.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 03:33 pm (UTC)(link)
*swallows*

Thank you for sharing this truth. Would you consider x-posting to the cabal?

[identity profile] ciderpress.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 06:40 pm (UTC)(link)
I am so glad you are doing the project, maggie. This rings in my head like a bell, telling me to wake up, wake up. Thanks.

[identity profile] livinglaurel.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 06:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Here via [livejournal.com profile] yeloson's project link -- wow, thank you for writing this. So powerful.


(HOME PLATE, OMG.)

[identity profile] dine.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 07:05 pm (UTC)(link)
thanks for sharing! this is haunting - uncovering the tragic and inhumane bits of history hurts, but knowing is totally worth it (I hope). it's hard to believe that none of this is covered earlier; not everyone gets a higher education, or even end up in that course if they do.
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[identity profile] delux-vivens.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 07:59 pm (UTC)(link)
The land where my great grands who were plantation runaways were buried was bought by whites and ploughed over.

Luckily, I never had to hear anyone brag about potatoes.

Also: Clearly there's no racism in Canada. Ever. Its never been *anything* like the US that way.

(can I link to this?)

[identity profile] yeloson.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 08:13 pm (UTC)(link)
It's this way in which they have to demean people, alive or dead. This level of callousness, and straight up evil.
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[identity profile] sugargroupie.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 08:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you for giving your history a voice. I'm having trouble picking out a starting point with my own history for this project because it's painful, but it needs to be written.

[identity profile] tammylee.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 09:01 pm (UTC)(link)
:O
I had no idea!
Honestly, why isn't post-secondary free for all our citizens? This is stuff EVERYONE needs to know.

[identity profile] sparkymonster.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 09:05 pm (UTC)(link)
I am really at a loss to express how fucking amazing this is. Thank you.

[identity profile] indirajames.livejournal.com 2009-01-15 11:59 pm (UTC)(link)
I can't add anything as a reply, I just wanted to say that this is really powerful to read, and thank you for sharing it with us.

[identity profile] robanybody.livejournal.com 2009-01-16 12:23 am (UTC)(link)
This is powerful writing, and I'm glad I read it, but Jesus, I'm horrified by the sheer callousness of these people.

[identity profile] sarahq.livejournal.com 2009-01-16 03:09 am (UTC)(link)
I'm shuddering. The potatoes were good?!? Jesus.

Your voice and your writing is so powerful.
frausorge: my arm in a black opera glove (Default)

[personal profile] frausorge 2009-01-16 08:05 am (UTC)(link)
Holy shit.

[identity profile] unusualmusic.livejournal.com 2009-01-16 11:49 pm (UTC)(link)
I think of cannibals when i read of the potatoes. holy shit.
havocthecat: the lady of shalott (Default)

[personal profile] havocthecat 2009-01-17 04:11 am (UTC)(link)
I think, personally, that I was most disturbed by the roadway built over the cemetery, and everyone driving, every day, over these bodies of people, and driving over them with their earthly cares, and no thought - possibly no knowledge of - the fact that there are once-living people under the ground that deserve more respect.

That's not to say that it isn't all disturbing, or all worthy of note, because it is. I'm just relating the one thing that affected me the most.

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_happyd_/ 2009-01-17 05:40 am (UTC)(link)
we are ignorant of our past and apathetic of our present:

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/01/08/racism-tolerate-study.html

... thanks for sharing this ms. m.

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