African Americans in Canada

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There is an African American diaspora in Canada.

Around 15,000 to 20,000 African Americans settled in Canada between the years 1850 and 1860.^[1]

In the 1820s, Canada saw a trickle of fugitive African American slaves from the United States. Eventually, these black fugitives from American slavery crossed into British North America in large numbers, using the secret routes of the Underground Railroad. By the time of the American Civil War, it is estimated that approximately 30,000 African American fugitives had escaped to Canada. In the late 1850s, around 800 free Black Americans were invited to migrate from California to Vancouver Island to assist British authorities. They left California because of racial discrimination imposed by law in their state.^[2] The Underground Railroad was a secret network that helped African Americans escape from slavery in the South to free states in the north and to Canada.^[3] Harriet Tubman helped enslaved Black people escape to Canada.^[4]

Around some 1,500 African Americans migrated to the Plains region of Canada in the years between 1905 and 1912. The African Americans mostly came from Oklahoma, although a few African American families were from Kansas and Texas. They settled in small, rural communities in Saskatchewan and Alberta.^[5]

The Niagara River was a destination for formerly enslaved African Americans escaping slavery in the South.^[6]

The descendants of Black Loyalists and African American refugees still live in Nova Scotia and Canada in the present day but they suffer from the same conditions of inequality as African Americans in the United States.^[7]