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Published address on slavery by Paola Brown at the Hamilton City Hall on February 7, 1851.
1851
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

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As elsewhere, African Canadians in Hamilton organized protests against racism and discrimination, participated in Emancipation Day celebrations on the first of August every year and sent men south to fight for the Union Army during the American Civil War. One of the biggest issues for African Canadians in the mid-1800s was the fact that their children were barred from the public schools that white children attended. Paola Brown, the city bellman and town crier, led the charge for integrated schools. For a time he was the unofficial leader of the Black community in Hamilton. In 1843, Brown and the Black residents signed and sent the following petition to the Governor General, Lord Elgin:

"We the people of colour in the Town of Hamilton have a right to inform Your Excellency of the treatment that we have to undergo.

We have paid the taxes and we are denied of the public schools, and we have applied to the Board of the Police and there is no steps taken to change this manner of treatment, and this kind of treatment is not in the United States for the children of colour go to the Public Schools together with the white children more especially in Philadelphia. And I thought there was not a man to be known by his colour under the British Flag….

We are called nigger when we go out in the street, and sometimes brick bats is sent after us as we pass in the street. We are not all absconders now we brought money into this Province, and we hope never to leave it, for we hope to enjoy rights in this Province…"

The Board of Police refused to yield to the prejudice of white parents and enforced the law that Black children be allowed to go to school with white children. Consequently, for a time, Black children attended the common schools in Hamilton.