Historically African-American (as opposed to Caribbean) community in Toronto -- where are they now?

[wild goose chase]

Atlanta actually recently surpassed Chicago for the second largest Black population.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/11/chicagos-black-population_n_572311.html


ETA: Found some more stats. In 1970, the Chicago metropolitan area had 1,345,000 blacks, in 2010 it was 1,645,000. In Washington the black population nearly doubled, from 750,000 to 1,438,000. Atlanta was especially dramatic from about 400,000 to 1,708,000, leapfrogging over Chicago.

Wow, that's pretty dramatic. I assume some part of that was immigration, but the main factor (which would probably still be true even if immigration from Africa and Caribbean countries to these particular cities wasn't at play) was the reversal of the previous trend (ie. what is now called the New Great Migration)? Black American demographic trends between cities, unlike say Hispanic and Asian American ones still less driven by immigration and mainly are driven by internal migration between states, right?

 

[wild goose chase]

I wonder if it is likely that with much growth projected to come from immigration, any US cities (whether New York, Miami or others which are much smaller) will come to resemble a Toronto-like pattern of African/Caribbean diversity (where half or more Black Americans locally will be born outside the US, the way Black Torontonians are for Canada)?

I suppose that it could be possible that some town or city in say, the Great Plains or Intermontane West or Pacific Northwest, that never had an African-American presence or only a small one suddenly becomes diverse from immigration and grows its black community within a generation (so that for the time being the black population is all or almost all foreign born, with their (US-born) children then being among the first African-Americans in their town). I think Brooks, Alberta is like that in Canada but I'm not sure. In fact I wonder if places like that already exist but just fall under the radar.

 

[King of Kensington]

Unlikely in the case of NYC/Miami, given that they already had large AA communities before and there's an American-born population of Caribbean origin too.

As for places in the US with majority foreign born black populations, probably a few suburbs of Miami, maybe some college towns, Portland, Maine (Somalis).

 

[wild goose chase]

You're right about the Black population being majority foreign born though. 56% of Black Torontonians were born outside Canada. Very few were born in the US though - 3,165 according to the NHS. Only 5.3% of Black Torontonians are third generation or more, of which presumably many are of long-time Black Canadian/African American roots.

Since Toronto and Canada in general more broadly had a large Black population foreign-born in recent years, I wonder how far back it was, or through which periods of time it was, when most were Canadian-born? I wonder if you went back further say two, three generations and farther back still, would you find that the majority were native-born in Canada, or would there still be a major foreign-born component through the US? It seems like the Black Canadian population was only in the tens of thousands for large parts of the 19th and 20th century, though there must have been some migration to and from the US.
https://www.ualberta.ca/~jrkelly/blacksinCanada.pdf

I know in the US, there must have been a long stretch of time when almost all the African-American population was native-born, because between the abolition of slavery and the 1960s when immigration laws were changed, there was no easy way for voluntary Black immigrants to arrive in the country from elsewhere. Would the same be true of Canada?

Another thing that was interesting from reading that article (https://www.ualberta.ca/~jrkelly/blacksinCanada.pdf) was this: "In the early 1900s, the growth in the Black population did not keep pace with that of other visible minority groups, particularly the Chinese. For example, while the number of Blacks actually decreased from 21,400 in 1881 to 19,500 in 1931, the number of Chinese grew tenfold from 4,400 to 46,500 during the same period." I had no idea that this was the case, assuming the Census stats were accurate then. I always assumed that Black Canadians made up the most long-standing communities compared to others -- Asians -- East and South, Latin Americans, Arabs etc. Seems like the statistic of which visible minority was largest in Canada changed many times throughout history (with I think South Asians the largest now, with Chinese largest earlier and Black Canadians the largest earlier still), although any non-European, non-Aboriginal minority in Canada probably made up no more than single-digit percents until the 1960s? I know in the US, for most of its history as a country it had African-Americans at 10-20% of its population, while Hispanics and Asians remained single-digit %s until recently for Hispanics, but if Canada had a much smaller population and proportion of any visible minorities to begin with, the rank order of population size between minorities could change more quickly. I know a lot of growth in the Black Canadian population comes from diverse African countries now (since Caribbean immigration probably reached its peak already) as there is in Francophone Montreal and even places like Ottawa (where I only recently found out that the largest visible minority was Black).

 

[King of Kensington]

Do you mean in all of Canada or in Toronto/Ontario? If you're including Blacks in Nova Scotia a majority in the 19th century would have been native born. Many of the African Americans who moved to Ontario in the 1840s and 1850s - it looks like the majority at the time of Confederation were native-born.

In 1871, there were 7,913 Blacks in the Maritimes (256 born in the US) and 13,453 Blacks in Ontario (5,843 born in the US). Hence 29% in Canada and 43% in Ontario that year were born in the US.

I would guess the Black population of Canada as a whole was majority Canadian-born until the 1960s.

I know there was a small Caribbean community in Canada that came in the 1910s and 1920s - I would guess (but I don't know for sure) that about half of the Black population in Toronto in the interwar years were Caribbean and the other half was AA.

 

[King of Kensington]

To get a sense of what Toronto's "old" Black community looks like, I looked at the 2011 NHS at the 65+ Black population (in other words, born 1946 or earlier).

https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm...&Temporal=2013&THEME=95&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=

Just 870 were born in Canada, 3% of the age cohort, so we're already talking about a tiny percentage of the community and a pretty small sample size.

Of the 870, 305 were 2nd generation and 565 were third generation. So we know that at least around a third or so are descended from the early 20th century wave.

But of the 870, more than 40% of the total - 380 - were not born in Ontario. These are presumably mostly Black Nova Scotians, I think there was a little influx of them in the 50s and 60s (Alexandra Park is said to have had a Black Nova Scotian community).

So if we remove these interprovincial migrants from the 3rd generation+ total, that leaves 305 2nd generation and just 185 3rd generation+ Ontario-born. This to me suggests that about 60% of the Black population pre-WWII was of Caribbean immigrant origin.

Obviously there's a lot of guesswork here.

Going down one age cohort (ages 55-64, or born 1946-1956), you can still see the impact of Nova Scotian migration. 1,300 (4%) are Canadian-born, again demonstrating how small the Black community was before the 1960s. And 505 of the 1300 (46%) were born in other provinces, almost all certainly coming from Nova Scotia.

The Dundas-Spadina area was the main Black area in Toronto until the 1960s, both the Caribbean wave of the 1910s/1920s and Nova Scotian wave of the 1950s/1960s. There's a Baptist church on Huron Street that's made up mostly of Black Nova Scotians, reflecting this history.

 

[wild goose chase]

Do you mean in all of Canada or in Toronto/Ontario? If you're including Blacks in Nova Scotia a majority in the 19th century would have been native born. Many of the African Americans who moved to Ontario in the 1840s and 1850s - it looks like the majority at the time of Confederation were native-born.

In 1871, there were 7,913 Blacks in the Maritimes (256 born in the US) and 13,453 Blacks in Ontario (5,843 born in the US). Hence 29% in Canada and 43% in Ontario that year were born in the US.

I would guess the Black population of Canada as a whole was majority Canadian-born until the 1960s.

I know there was a small Caribbean community in Canada that came in the 1910s and 1920s - I would guess (but I don't know for sure) that about half of the Black population in Toronto in the interwar years were Caribbean and the other half was AA.

That's interesting. I was thinking about Toronto and Ontario in particular, but was talking about Canada as a whole I think since it seemed like historical data was easier to find for the country as a whole.

 

[wild goose chase]

To get a sense of what Toronto's "old" Black community looks like, I looked at the 2011 NHS at the 65+ Black population (in other words, born 1946 or earlier).

https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm...&Temporal=2013&THEME=95&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=

Just 870 were born in Canada, 3% of the age cohort, so we're already talking about a tiny percentage of the community and a pretty small sample size.

Of the 870, 305 were 2nd generation and 565 were third generation. So we know that at least around a third or so are descended from the early 20th century wave.

But of the 870, more than 40% of the total - 380 - were not born in Ontario. These are presumably mostly Black Nova Scotians, I think there was a little influx of them in the 50s and 60s (Alexandra Park is said to have had a Black Nova Scotian community).

So if we remove these interprovincial migrants from the 3rd generation+ total, that leaves 305 2nd generation and just 185 3rd generation+ Ontario-born. This to me suggests that about 60% of the Black population pre-WWII was of Caribbean immigrant origin.

Obviously there's a lot of guesswork here.

Going down one age cohort (ages 55-64, or born 1946-1956), you can still see the impact of Nova Scotian migration. 1,300 (4%) are Canadian-born, again demonstrating how small the Black community was before the 1960s. And 505 of the 1300 (46%) were born in other provinces, almost all certainly coming from Nova Scotia.

The Dundas-Spadina area was the main Black area in Toronto until the 1960s, both the Caribbean wave of the 1910s/1920s and Nova Scotian wave of the 1950s/1960s. There's a Baptist church on Huron Street that's made up mostly of Black Nova Scotians, reflecting this history.

Do you think that Ontario or Toronto had significantly larger Black populations in the 20th century and before than the numbers suggested by looking at the current cohort of 3rd generation+ Black Canadians that descend from them (ie. many who were here then, and left the city, or returned to the US, or many who have descendants who are mixed-race and may not have identified themselves on the survey etc). I have heard that it is hard to estimate the population that arrived through the Underground Railroad to Ontario but many estimates I see are in the tens of thousands or more (I have even seen estimates upward of 100, 000), but that would exceed the numbers that I see in later 19th and 20th century census data on how many Black Canadians there were then.

 

[King of Kensington]

I've heard as high as 40,000 lived in Upper Canada, but that seems to be on the very high end. The 1931 census says the city had 1300 blacks, but community estimates at the time suggested about 2,500, which seems reasonable. It's hard to know exactly how many descendants of that "old" community there are today, given how much time has passed since then.

 

[wild goose chase]

I've heard as high as 40,000 lived in Upper Canada, but that seems to be on the very high end. The 1931 census says the city had 1300 blacks, but community estimates at the time suggested about 2,500, which seems reasonable. It's hard to know exactly how many descendants of that "old" community there are today, given how much time has passed since then.

I have heard that undercounts sometimes are an issue in censuses (such as in the NHS even as of last time) especially for the more vulnerable or minority groups, with often community estimates giving larger numbers for many groups.

I know that non-responses are partly the issue, but especially in an atmosphere like the 19th and early 20th century where racism and discrimination was prominent, perhaps many people did not want to be open about their racial identity or tried to pass in a different category?

 

[wild goose chase]

There was mention that there could be undercounts of Black Canadians even fairly recently, with one source I found from looking at the Wikipedia article on Black Canadians -- it mentioned that differences in reporting ancestry caused re-adjustments in the census stats (eg. Caribbean identities being grouped with Black Canadians to adjust the numbers upward). I wouldn't think that there are that many Black Canadians who would just put "British", or "French" alone while not choosing the category in the visible minority option though but maybe I'm wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Canadians#Demographics_and_Census_issues

http://news-archive.mcgill.ca/w97/black.htm

"At times, it has been claimed that Black Canadians have been significantly undercounted in census data. Writer George Elliott Clarke has cited aMcGill University study which found that fully 43 per cent of all Black Canadians were not counted as black in the 1991 Canadian census, because they had identified on census forms as British, French or other cultural identities which were not included in the census group of Black cultures.[14]

Although subsequent censuses have reported the population of Black Canadians to be much more consistent with the McGill study's revised 1991 estimate than with the official 1991 census data, no recent study has been conducted to determine whether some Black Canadians are still substantially missed by the self-identification method."

 

[King of Kensington]

The thing is, pre-1970 Toronto's Black community was so small that even a small influx would rival the existing Black population. For instance, the Black population of Toronto had dwindled to a few hundred by the turn of the 20th century, but there was a Caribbean community (the government had controlled and limited immigration) had numbered about 1,200 by the 1920s. After WWII, Toronto had replaced Boston as the "big city" for Maritimers and that included Black Nova Scotians. This group was big enough to be "noticed", apparently they were initially looked down upon and seen as a bunch of hicks and bumpkins by the existing Black community. Many settled in Alexandra Park.

As I noted in the other thread, the Dundas-Spadina area was home to most of the Black population until the 1960s. This isn't a coincidence - many moved to that area because Jews (who owned most of the properties in the area) were willing to rent to Blacks when others would not.

According to one scholar of the Toronto Black community at the time, even the move to the Oakwood-Vaughan Rd.-Eglinton area in the Caribbean influx was related to the fact that it had previously been a Jewish area.

 

[Admiral Beez]

What happened to the historical African-American neighbourhoods in Toronto? Where were they and what later changes took place?.

There are new African-Canadian neighbourhoods in Toronto, including what's become referred to as Dixon in Rexdale, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_diaspora I imagine this community will eventually break up and scatter into mainstream life like other ethnically specific neighbourhoods.

 

[Johnny Au]

The area of Eglinton between Oakwood and Marlee at one point produced more reggae music than anywhere else outside of Kingston, Jamaica.

The Five Points neighbourhood (aka the intersection of Oakwood, Vaughan, and Belvidere) is mainly Caribbean now, but before, it was mainly Italian and Portuguese (with some Brazilian).

The Jewish and the African Canadian communities at Dundas and Spadina very much moved out and the Chinese replaced them.

 

[King of Kensington]

I have heard that undercounts sometimes are an issue in censuses (such as in the NHS even as of last time) especially for the more vulnerable or minority groups, with often community estimates giving larger numbers for many groups.

I know that non-responses are partly the issue, but especially in an atmosphere like the 19th and early 20th century where racism and discrimination was prominent, perhaps many people did not want to be open about their racial identity or tried to pass in a different category?

Black population counts in the past were certainly an undercount. According to this book, while the census reported that about 1000 Blacks lived in Toronto at the time, a social welfare agency estimated that there were about 4000-5000 Blacks in the city in 1941.

http://tinyurl.com/z6on9un