Black people have contributed significantly to Guelph since the mid 19th century and a spotlight is now being put on that history.
“They were foundational to Guelph. They have built Guelph,” said Jade Ferguson, an art professor at the University of Guelph who helped launch Black Past in Guelph, a website examining the rich local Black history of Guelph.
Black Past in Guelph shares information about Guelph families and places they’ve lived around 1911. It shares information about Black music, art, and notable figures in the community who helped facilitate civil rights.
Ferguson said it's important to tell local stories of Black people because blackness and Black people in Guelph are forgotten.
“We often think about Guelph as being a Scottish space and we often think of Black people as being recent,” said Ferguson.
“Whether it’s something like ‘Oh there's Black people in Guelph? They’re protesting?’”
Ferguson said the website will continue to be updated. New information will include a focus on Black women such as a news correspondent in Guelph in the early 1890s which draws a picture of the social life and the aspirations of young Black women in Guelph.
“Many of them are descendants of four million enslaved people so it's an interesting look into their hopes and dreams,” said Ferguson.
Black Past in Guelph is a university and community research collaboration between Ferguson and the Guelph Black Heritage Society.
Ferguson said digging into the history of Black people in Guelph began a few years ago when the Guelph Black Heritage Society expressed an interest in learning more about local history in 2018.
Together, 83 U of G undergraduate and graduate students contributed to the research of the website along with Ferguson and Melissa Tanti, a literature professor at McMaster University. The project was funded by the school of English and theatre studies and the college of arts at U of G.
The group dug up information from local historians and the Guelph Museum and found old articles and handwritten contacts that led to new leads. They decided they will tell stories about Black people who are connected to Guelph and civil rights.
“So looking at a baseball player who is central to integration or a black nurse who was part of the civil rights movement integration that happened in Guelph or looking at people who are most notable,” said Ferguson.
“There are some photos that are really beautiful of Black families in the Guelph archives.”
She said some of the most surprising finds in the research was the ways in which the Black community had high aspirations despite an absence of opportunities available to them.
Fergus said there is an evident determination to figure out ways of supporting those aspirations whether it's education or travel or their deep desire to contribute to the Canadian military.
“When you look at the census in terms of employment, most of them are doing manual labour where they were Black women or Black men.
She said the history tells stories of about the lack of opportunities leading families to go back home or engage in criminal behaviour.
“It's a vicious cycle. Poverty, lack of opportunity, education, and employment, leading to various ways trying to survive,” said Ferguson.
She said looking at the maps is interesting because one can see how the Black families are interconnected.
“As you’re working through this you notice like 'Oh these two people are actually related, they're actually sisters and they live close to each other and you can imagine that they're taking care of the children between them and they live blocks from the church,” said Ferguson.