Dear Editor
It is time, since Black History Month (Feb. 1-29) is upon us, that I wrote about my small experience of the black people who once lived in this area and try to dispel a chilling idea that has, in the last few years, been subtly spread about that, after the black people came from Oklahoma, they suffered severe racism here.
My mother’s family homesteaded on the banks of Big Gully Creek. One of the families across the creek was black. They came from London, England! The man of the family was educated and would often cross the creek to visit my grandfather, to whom he once quipped, “I suppose you are called a green Englishman, but I am a black Englishman.”
(A mile east lived a Métis family, with whom my mother’s family became lifelong friends.)
One bright June day, when I was four years old, three black men appeared on our doorstep asking for my father. I have an idea they were applying to work cutting trees growing under overhead telephone lines. Father was the lineman and secretary for the local telephone company.
Mother told them he was out seeding oats, but they could see him if they stayed for dinner.
They decided to sit under some pines where it was cool and shady. There were no other family members at home except a sister just older then I and we went outside and sat with the men. They entertained us be making little toys from fallen pine cones. We really had no idea they were black, we certainly could see, however, that one of the men had lost some fingers on one hand. That’s all I remember about that day, but 15 years later I was at the bridal shower for the financée of the son of that man.
The Shiloh settlement northeast of Maidstone was 30 miles from our home, a long way on foot or horseback, so we knew little about the people there, black or white, when I was small.
My mother told an amazing story about a hat. It was rare for women, at one time, to get far from home, but one day she was in Maidstone, probably in the 1920s, and she was wearing a new hat. It came from Eaton’s and probably cost $1.50. When she sat down in the theatre, she chuckled to herself. There in the row ahead of her was a woman wearing the identical hat. It didn’t bother her, there would have been hundreds of women across Canada wearing that hat’s production mates.
The fact that a black woman from Shiloh, who probably did not get to town any more often than did the white women from Forest Bank, would wear an identical hat and be in town the same day was funny. In some parts of the world, at one time, however, the situation would have created a furor.
When I was in my late teens, the phone lines northeast of Maidstone were buzzing. Mrs. Mattie Mayes, the popular matriarch of the black community, had gone picking saskatoons and had not come home. People familiar with the area, black and white, turned out the next morning to search for her. A local tracking dog was brought in. It wasn’t long before he found her. His barks could be heard, but his owner was just a little anxious as he rushed toward the sound. The dog was a fine tracker, but he was not a social dog.
He was startled to see Mattie Mayes, seated on the grass, calmly stroking the head of the tail-wagging dog and murmuring, “Nice dog, nice dog.”
A far cry from when in the United States tracking dogs of a truly vicious nature would be set on the trail of runaway slaves.
Gradually the black families began to drift away to make a living elsewhere. One day two women were in Edmonton when they thought they would see if one of their Shiloh neighbours, a bachelor who had moved to that city, was in the phone book. He was. They phoned him. There was a brief silence after he answered and they identified themselves. Then came his voice, “You’re the first people who ever phoned me.”
One day a woman, daughter of pioneers north of us who had lived along a tract often taken by the men of the black settlement, told me the following not many years before she died. I later had her write it down.
“The reason the men would take that trail, north of Big Gully Creek, would be to haul sleigh loads of wheat to be ground at the mill in Lloydminster. They would usually arrive back at my home after dark. They might or might not have something to eat with them or Mother might feed them. Their horses would be fed and watered, the men – and this would be several, as they travelled in convoys – would spread blankets on the kitchen floor and sleep the night away. One time, Father had been away for awhile. He came home, put his team of horses in their stall, then, going into the house, tiptoed over all the sleepers into his bedroom.”
By 1971, all the black people had left the Maidstone area. I have no idea why the government of the time decided to have an event, which they named Homecoming ‘71, but when I heard of it I had no interest. However, I did go to the first public meeting and became intrigued with what the government planned. Communities were to mark historic sites, honour people who had made their mark and encourage community groups.
Several ideas were set forth and the public was to vote on them. After the decision was made, money would be available. One of the worthwhile projects was the restoration of Shiloh Baptist Church, the church built and used by the back people of the Shiloh community.
I became the secretary for the RM of Eldon Homecoming ‘71 committee and from then on carefully recorded the committee accomplishments, and we accomplished a lot.
I had never seen Shiloh Church, but the people around it, the white people, began a demanding program to renovate the old log building and to clear brush out of the cemetery. A large area surrounded the church and none of the graves had headstones.
I know I had a shorter version of this missive published a few years ago, but I am writing because it is Black History Month and there is too much negativity put into print, even untruths. Those families responsible for the project worked for months, grubbing out caraganas, putting old grader blades either side of the building and then wire run across to tighten them up and straighten the building.
We had a fine dedication day and the local people continued for years to mow the grass, clean the church and keep the visitor books. By and by people from away “discovered” the place and then the propaganda began. According to some writers the area had been a hotbed of racism. One claimed it was so bad that two schools, one for white children, one for black, had been built.
Another hinted segregation still went on in public buildings.
I’ve no doubt there were some white people and some black people who viewed one another with suspicion, just as some white people didn’t get along and some black families didn’t always agree with other black families.
But if some writers and others were right about the racism, I wonder why these were white people who would casually mention they were delivered by a black midwife. I remember the way old friendships were renewed between back and white people at the dedication day and events thereafter held at Shiloh Church. I wonder why the children who attended the one and only one-room school remained lifelong friends.
It has become increasingly common for people to use the word racism as a shotgun word in order the achieve some goal. I am not denying racism. We could all become racists in certain situations, but I’m fed up with what I’ll call “invented racism.”
We white people did not have to save Shiloh Church, but if we had not done so it would by now have collapsed into the earth. I have often been irritated when people responsible for something worthwhile have been ignored and forgotten, when others take or are given credit.
It’s like a word left out of a letter. The letter I was pleased to have published recently about the unintended destruction and the deliberate destruction, of songbirds, had one word missing. Where I had written “windmill farms” the word “farms” was missed. The letter then read “windmills.” I did not intend that I meant a rare lone windmill on a real farm would destroy birds, but I meant those huge installations known as windmill farms, with acres of whirring windmills.
But that is much like the history of Shiloh Church: something is left out these days wherever I read about it. And what is left out is the people who spent all those hours, did all the backbreaking work and kept things going so Shiloh Church could eventually become a provincial heritage site.
Perhaps this letter should go on Facebook, so it could “go viral” and more people would hear what is, in this case, the truth.
Christine Pike
Waseca
