A Historical Exploration of Citizenship Practices of African Canadian Immigrants in 1920s Alberta

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1 Thinking Beyond Borders: Global Ideas, Global Values Online Proceedings of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education (CASAE) l'association Canadienne pour l'étude de l'éducation des Adultes (ACÉÉA). 27th National Conference 2008 at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia. Edited by Janet Groen and Shibao Guo. ISBN A Historical Exploration of Citizenship Practices of African Canadian Immigrants in 1920s Alberta Jennifer Kelly University of Alberta Dan Cui University of Alberta Abstract: This paper explores the citizenship practices of African immigrants in 1920s in Alberta. It aims to explore the dialectics between structure and agency and to reconceptualize citizenship as participation beyond the formal citizenship practices. Our research is a part of a much larger SSHRC funded project, Racialization, Immigration and Citizenship: Alberta s, which explores how processes of immigration, racialization and citizenship affected the social formation of African Canadian communities in Alberta. Introduction Our study of the civil activities and community practices of early African Canadian immigrants in 1920s Alberta reveals an anomaly in terms of conceptualization of formal citizenship. Due to the racialized nature of Canadian society during this period of time very few opportunities existed for groups, racialized as subordinate, to become active in areas traditionally designated as the public sphere. Thus the question arises as to how should we theorize early African Canadian immigrants civil participation? Can these groups be regarded as full citizens in the traditional sense? In order to conceptualize social practices that cannot be captured in the language of formal citizenship should we call the activities and organizing undertaken by the early African Canadian community aspects of informal citizenship or after Sassen (2006) denationalized citizenship? What is the distinction between these two forms of citizenship? Further, if we decide on using the concept of denationalized citizenship to analyze the experiences of these early African Canadian pioneers does this historical and empirical evidence indicate that what Sassen is describing is not a new phenomenon attributed solely to globalization? Can we say that denationalized citizenship can be applied to the every day experiences and activities that African Canadians engaged in within their communities in the 1920 s? In this sense, the purpose of this paper is to complexify our conceptual understanding of citizenship through the case study of African Canadian immigrants in 1920s Alberta. Via empirical and conceptual analysis, we can rethink citizenship theories in general and denationalized citizenship in particular. Theoretical framework Citizenship: formal and informal There are several ways of theorizing citizenship. Abu-Laban (2007) summarizes three ways of citizenship theorization: citizenship as rights, including social rights, political rights and civil rights; citizenship as participation, the central themes of which focus on community, belonging and political participation; and citizenship as inequality, which means citizenship produces inequality both at global level (i.e. EU citizenship) and at individual level (i.e. undocumented immigrants). Sassen (2006) argues that the traditional model of citizenship which is based on boundaries between the citizen and alien is inadequately theorized in terms of contact between 202

2 subjects and the state. She delineates some kinds of informal membership, for example, undocumented immigrant, who though deprived of formal status, engage in informal daily practices that enable them to emerge and be recognized as social and political actors. Such forms of theorization challenges the common sense understanding of who is citizen, who is not; who can be considered citizen, who can not. Citizenship is not a neutral concept. Under the guise of nominal equality lies a hierarchy of different citizenship status. Further, the work of Daniel Schugurensky proves useful for teasing out issues around citizenship. For Schugurensky, citizenship entails three dimensions: status, identity, civic virtues and agency (pp ). In terms of our analysis in this paper the idea of citizenship as agency is the most pertinent dimension. As such, citizenship as agency invokes the idea of citizens as social actors. Agency refers to the state of being in action or exerting power. The exercise of citizenship, individual or collective, does not occur in a vacuum, but in concrete social structures mediated by power relations. social action occurs in a context marked by constant interplay of domination and autonomy. (2006, p.69) The dialectics between the general and the particular As well as drawing on citizenship theories, we also recognize the usefulness of exploring literature on what Henri Lefebvre identifies as the everyday life. For Lefebvre, as described by Highmore, dialectics had to be at the center of any engagement with the everyday. His explicit Marxism (both as a philosophy and as an activism) meant that his work gravitated towards strengthening the general over the particular, but his dialectical approach understood the particular as saturated with the general in ways we are always particular (it was never simply subsumable within the general). (2002, p ) Thus in examining and analyzing the newspaper columns Our Negro Citizen we are dealing with the everyday; with those aspects of life which are often regarded with a sense of naturalness that no longer holds our attention; it has a degree of invisibility. We are interested in the general as well as the particular nature of these Our Negro Citizen columns. Research design In exploring the citizenship practices of the early African Canadian immigrants in Alberta we generated our data from several resources and sites. Oral history interviews with early Black settlers in Alberta were accessed from the Charles Irby special collection located at the University of California at Santa Barbara US. Another data pool was accessed through analysis of Alberta based newspapers. During our extensive search of microfiche of newspapers we noted a special column: Our Negro Citizen which occurred in the local newspapers Edmonton Journal and Edmonton Bulletin in the early 1920s. Although the newspaper column only appeared between 1921 and 1922 we were able to collate 84 different issues of this column. While initially the column seemed to deal with the trivial and the day to day we soon began to realize that through a close examination of the everyday (Lefebvre) we might be able to tease out an understanding of how a column entitled Our Negro Citizen constructs and reconstructs life in Alberta among African Canadians in the early 1920s. An initial interrogation of the columns reveals the names of social and political organizations as well as people with a degree of status within the African Canadian communities in the Edmonton region and Alberta (e.g, Junkins, 203

3 Breton/Keystone). This list of community activities and individuals is essential in allowing us to examine the community activities as well as formal or informal political participation of African Canadians in the 1920s. To assist with the process of understanding the meaning of this information in terms of citizenship we set up a database of the information contained within the column and conducted both a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of this information in order to map a clear picture of the following questions: which names are reported most frequently in the column? Who are they? Can classed and gendered dynamics be identified? Which organizations do they belong to? What formal or informal citizenship practices do they engage with? Analysis and Discussions The preliminary data of this project reveal that although these early immigrants are not granted the same equal rights as Anglo-British citizens with regard to the public sphere, they are in fact informally enacting some dimensions of citizenship. These African Canadians maintained strong ties within their resident communities participated in civic activities and contributed to the community in one way or another. In this early period of Canadian nation building, there existed openings or spaces, (as theorized by Sassen), for the emergence of political subjects able to engage in political activities, formal or informal. As agents, they take advantage of such openings to actively engage in transforming their social context towards an equal citizenship. We have identified one theme that seems to emerge from the data, citizenship as participation. While without doubt these newspaper columns represent the experiences of a certain classed group within the African Canadian community it nonetheless allows us to access some of the day to day citizen practices. Interesting as well, are the ways in which these newspaper columns illustrate the way Christianity articulates respectability. Churches and pastors are rife throughout the organizations identified in the column. However, for the purposes of this paper issues of citizenship are isolated and discussed citizenship as participation Citizenship as participation Aristotle indicates that citizenship is a bond forged in the intimacy of participation in public affairs...it was neither a right to be claimed nor status to be conferred on anybody outside the established rank of class. This indicates another important understanding of general citizenship literature which conceives of citizenship primarily in terms of participation. According to Abu- Laban (2000), this conceptualization takes as its central themes notions of community, belong and political participation (p. 514). Bloemraad (2000) also points out that participation provides a means to investigate the dynamic between individual immigrants agency and the structural or institutional constraints they face in exercising that agency (p. 25). Our exploration of the citizenship practices of early African immigrants in Alberta reveals this dialectic between structure and agency, the general and the particular. A macro-level analysis shows that citizenship regulations in the 1920s make it difficult for immigrants of certain racialized identities to enter Canada and to consequently become naturalized Canadian citizens. Citizenship was not an automatic aspect of residency; the racialized structure of Canadian society was often prohibitive in enabling African Canadians to undertake traditional forms of citizenship within the public sphere. As Kelly & Trebilcock argue, The Immigration Act and regulations provided the government with enough flexibility to prevent admission, to prohibit naturalization, and to effect the removal of those who are perceived as lowering the standards of acceptable citizenry, by their nationality, race, or 204

4 political opinions Successive amendments to the Immigration Act continued to give the cabinet broad discretion in determining those who would be admitted to Canada and those who could be expelled (1998, p. 166) In addition, section 38, which authorized Cabinet to declare immigrations of certain races inadmissible owing to their being unsuited to the climate and requirements of Canada, their probable inability to become readily assimilated or assume the responsibilities and duties of Canadian citizenship within a reasonable time. (ibid. p. 184) In this aspect, it is evident that the Immigration Act and regulations were used as mechanisms for preventing undesirable immigrants from entering into Canada and preventing them from acquiring citizenship. According to Kelly & Trebilcock (1988), Canadian citizenship was defined in the Immigration Act as meaning: a person born in Canada; a British subject with domicile; and a person naturalized under the laws of Canada (p. 159). For African Canadian immigrants from the US, (which was the primary origin) the only option to acquire Canadian citizenship was to apply for naturalization. However, an exploration of the naturalization requirements and processes in the early 20th century indicates that accessing citizenship through naturalization was not straight forward. Before 1914, Immigrants with three years residence in Canada could bring an application for naturalization before a court official, who, had heard the applicants swear an oath of allegiance and swear to have fulfilled the three year residency requirement, and upon being satisfied that the application was of good character, would issue a naturalization certification. The certificate was then posted in court and, if no valid objection was filed, the act provided that the court, on the last day of sittings, shall direct that the certificate be filed (Kelly & Trebilcock, 1998, p. 159) However, in the following year, the court went further and held that it had the power to go behind the certificate even where no objection had been filed (ibid.). What s worse, after a new Naturalization Act was passed in 1914, the requirements for naturalization were tightened. Immigrants were now required to live in Canada for five years before applying to be naturalized had to provide evidence of good character but also to have sufficient knowledge of English or French. Where satisfied that the applicant qualified for naturalization, the court was required to send its decision to the secretariat of state, who, with absolute discretion, was authorized to grant or withhold the certificate without assigning any reason, and whose decision was not subject to an appeal (p. 160) In this macro socio-historical context constructed through legal forms, it is evident that immigrants of African descent who were viewed as undesirable faced numerous difficulties and institutional constraints in acquiring formal citizenship and participating in the public sphere of politics. However, their low status and marginalized voices were not silenced in the political life of Alberta; rather, they actively enacted citizenship as participation via the development of political organizations and various aspects of community building. In this sense, the conceptualization of formal citizenship discussed earlier in this paper can be viewed as 205

5 inadequate to theorize these early Black pioneers civic participation and their contributions to Canada in both the economic and political domains. In fact, the empirical data we acquired from the special column: Our Negro Citizen which appeared in the Edmonton Journal and Edmonton Bulletin in the early 1920s revealed that there was a whole plethora of political organizations founded within Alberta s communities of African descent: Negro Independent Political Association of Alberta, Negro Welfare Association, The Phyllis Wheatley Women s Christian Temperance Union, the United Negro Improvement Association Negro Political Association and etc. The role that these political organizations played can be roughly summarized into two themes: First, they represent the political voice of African Canadian communities in pursuit of equality and democracy. This pursuit for equality via a strong political voice can be identified in the column that appeared in the Edmonton Journal on Oct 22, 1921: The Negro Political Association of Alberta wish to inform the different political parties that we will not endorse any until we have heard all the candidates of the different parties, Then that party that sets forth in their platform the true principles of democracy and the protection of their citizens and country, regardless of race, creed or color, without discrimination and we are sure these candidates are not camouflaging, then that party we will endorse and give our hearty support to at the polls and live up to our obligation in every respect ( Our Negro Citizen, Edmonton Journal, October, 22, 1921) In this sense, community-based political mobilization enabled individual immigrants to exert their political agency to influence state policies and practices, in other words, to change the social context in which they find themselves. Second, these African Canadian political organizations also mediated political relation between the State and the local African Canadian community. A return to the column printed on September 19, 1921 indicates clearly how such organizations were able to assist both provincial politics and the African Canadian community for their mutual economic benefit. The committee composed of Rev. Geo. W. Slater, Jr., Pastor of the Immanuel A. M. E Church, Ira J. Day, and D, W. Anderson, who a few days ago called upon the mayor and the principal authorities in the interests of the unemployed colored people report that their efforts are meeting with very gratifying success. Rev. Slater reports that he finds that the mines, the packing plants, and the harvest fields are securing extra help now from the ranks of their people who were idle a few days ago and that also in compliance with the request made in the following letter from Mayor Duggan, Rev. Slater called upon Mr. Jamieson of the C. N. R. and finds out the demands for labour on the railroad is such that all of the unemployed men of the Negroes can find permanent work with that company. A letter from the mayor to the local community followed on from the commentary: Edmonton Alberta, Sept. 14, 1921 Rev. Geo, W. Slater 9633, 107A avenue, City Dear Sir,-- I have been in communication with Mr. Jamieson, room 5, C. N. R. Edmonton, with the result of that he is prepared to employ all the colored people 206

6 requiring work, I would like you to call to see him as early as possible so that arrangements can be made to take care of all the unemployed colored people. I shall be glad to be advised by you as to how many take advantage of this opportunity. Yours truly, D. M. DUGGAN Mayor What needs to be mentioned here is that the Ira J. Day who is discussed above in the commentary is the President of the Negro Welfare Association and an activist in his community. Through the efforts of African Canadian political organizations, immigrants of African descent were able to participate in both the political and economic domain and contribute to nation building to varying degrees. Evident from these discourses is the actuality that during this period of time unemployment was an issue for both the mainstream community and the coloured community. The agential aspects of these groups move beyond just advocating on behalf of the African Canadian communities into a sphere which is concerned with issues of identity and community formation. Gendered nature of the wider society is also reflected in these columns as women tended to act in an ancillary role in many of these political organizations. While male dominance was evident it was not uniform and women had access to several women only spaces such as Phyllis Wheatley W.C.T.U. or the Black Cross Nurses. Conclusion This research will make several important contributions. Theoretically the research develops a complex understanding of citizenship: a) its intersection with racialization and immigration and b) how historical analysis informs us that Sassen s new ways of articulating citizenship may not just be related to the effects of globalization. For people working with immigrants, the paper will provide a useful historical understanding of the experiences and issues related to immigrants citizenship practices. This understanding will also help researchers to reflect on how to categorize the changes that the language of formal citizenship fails to capture. A genealogy of adult education practices can emerge. References Abu-Laban, Y. (2000).Reconstructing an inclusive citizenship for a New Millennium: Globalization, Migration and Difference. International Politics. 37 (4), Bloemraad, I. (2000). Citizenship and immigration: A current review. Journal of International Migration and Integration. 1(1), Kelly, N. & Trebilcock, M. (1998). The making of the mosaic: A history of Canadian Immigration Policy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Sassen, S. (2006). The repositioning of citizenship and alienage: Emergent subjects and spaces for politics. In K. E. Tunstall, (Ed.). Displacement, Asylum, Migration (pp ). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shugurensky, D. (2006). Adult citizenship education: An over view of the field. In T. Fenwick, T. Nesbit & B. Spencer (Eds.), Contexts of education: Canadian perspectives (pp ). Toronto: Thompson Educational 207