How a pair of shoes kickstarted Black history in Victoria

Mifflin Gibbs (left) via US Library of Congress. Peter Lester via Royal BC Museum & Archives

December 6th was officially “Put On Your Own Shoes Day.” It’s not clear who made it a day of recognition or why. But shoes, when we first learn to tie them, when we buy our first pair of, say, Converse or high heels, are important.

Walking our own unique mile in the shoes we choose is a form of self-expression. Big “H” History is also the history of shoes. For two Black businessmen in San Francisco in 1858, a pair of shoes inspired a journey from the US to seek a new life and their luck here in Victoria.

In 1858, Black San Francisco shop owner Peter Lester was barred, because of his race, from pressing charges in a court of law against two white men after they stole a pair of shoes from his store and then assaulted him with a cane.

His business partner Mifflin Gibbs, an activist against unequal laws in California and slavery in the USA, later wrote in his autobiography that “while our existence was tolerated, we were powerless to appeal to law for the protection of life or property.”

Tired of the pervasive racism they faced in California, Lester and Gibbs decided to take their experience as proprietors of the Pioneer Boot and Shoe Emporium and head north.

Walking in the shoes of a Black person in the late 19th century in the colonial outpost of Victoria meant seeking opportunity through obstacles. Though California was a ‘free state’—no longer actively participating in slaveholding—under its 1849 Constitution, Black residents were unable to vote or attend schools beyond the primary level.

In his book Go Do Some Great Thing, about Lester and other Black people in British Columbia, Kilan Crawford explains that Black Americans were called to immigrate to Vancouver Island because of the belief of the day, that its proximity to Asia gave them “the opportunity to become merchant princes of the world.” Worried about an influx of Americans at the beginning of the Gold Rush and the risk of Vancouver Island slipping from Britain’s control, Governor James Douglas called Black Pioneers, as they came to be known, to come to the Island as a population cudgel against American territorial designs.

The arrival of the Black fortune and safety seekers who answered that call sparked what contemporary journalist J. Ebry described as the “invasion of Negroes in Victoria.”

It was hardly an “invasion,” but hundreds of African Americans did board steamers between 1858 and 1860 headed for Victoria in the hope of buying land and building homes and starting their own businesses there free of the constraints of the discrimination and race-based violence they faced at home.

On April 24, 1858 the Steamship Commodore sailed into Victoria harbour from San Francisco, carrying 35 Black people. Among them were Fortune Richard, Wellington Delaney Moses and Mr. Mercier, part of a self-proclaimed delegation called the Pioneer Committee that met, shortly after their arrival, with Governor Douglas. Their landing is recorded in one of the Parade of Ships plaques attached to the upper causeway across from the Empress Hotel. “In commemoration of the arrival of the first Black settlers to the Colony of Vancouver's Island."

In that meeting, the delegation was told that they could purchase land at a price of $5 an acre, that they could vote after residing in Victoria for a period of nine months, and, most importantly, that they could become British citizens and could enjoy their same and full rights under the law.

In a letter, Moses would later write to Wellington,“to describe the beauty of the country my pen cannot do it. It is one of the most beautifully level towns I was ever in…I consider Victoria to be one of the garden spots of the world.” It still is.

Victoria, was also a deeply imperial and colonial outpost of the British government and monarchy and could certainly serve up its own brand of racism. The book Some Reminisces of Victoria , written in 1912 by Edgar Fawcett and digitized by Project Gutenberg, reveals the discrimination and disenfranchisement men like Lester and Gibbs, along with fellow Black merchants, carpenters, masons, fishermen, and blacksmiths faced in the emerging capital city.

Promised equal rights with the whites by Governor Douglas, whose mother was a “free” (mixed race and not enslaved) Black woman from Guyana, their successful mercantile venture was registered in Victoria’s Directory of commercial progress as “Lester & Gibbs, the colored grocers on Yates Street, between Wharf and Government.”

After being refused entry in white outfits, Black men in Victoria formed their own voluntary militia called the Pioneer Rifle Corps. But confronted with discrimination from their white counterparts, the group disbanded and many returned to the US.

But in this same era, Black people who, for example, reserved seats in the dress circle of the theatre were “at the risk of angering the white patrons who sat beside them and were all too happy to voice their wishes to have them removed,” Fawcett writes.

According to Fawcett, Black people living in Victoria were also refused service in local saloons and eateries. Black men’s applications to join Victoria’s first hook and ladder fire company were disallowed. But these barriers didn’t prevent Gibbs’ or Lester’ enterprises from thriving.

Gibbs prospered in Victoria as a merchant. He studied informally here before returning to Oberlin College in the US to complete his law degree, at a time when notions of border, citizenry and cross border certifications and appointments were more fluid. His new acquired British citizen status, however, did make his pathway to success far easier. In 1866, he became the first Black person to hold public office in BC when he was elected to Victoria’s City Council representing James Bay.

According to the BC Black History Awareness Society archives, Peter Lester lived on Vancouver Street for decades and was a well-known figure in Victoria. After the death of his wife Nancy in 1892, he sold his property here and returned to the United States. Ultimately, Gibbs too, returned to the US in 1870, following his wife who left a year prior—having, despite her husband’s political and economic standing, never felt accepted or comfortable in their predominantly white social circles in Victoria.

In his doctoral research project on “Negro Settlements in British Columbia,” James Pilton writes “ attempts were made to segregate [Blacks from whites] them in the churches and theatres, and to exclude them from the public bars.” Many Black pioneers came for the opportunities but found the culture too akin to the bigotry they had tried to leave behind, or found themselves nostalgic for their former country and the community and family they had there. Like many of these peers, Lester and Gibbs eventually returned to the US once the Civil War was over.

The reality of marginalization from white society rang true for Black people in British Columbia in the decades to follow, and accounts of BC history increasingly speak to this side of the story.

The discrimination Black Pioneers faced in a deeply colonial BC are echoed in Toronto artist Deanna Bowen’s installation in Vancouver Art Gallery’s current exhibit Conceptions of White. Her piece, titled “White Man’s Burden” speaks to the ways in which Indigenous and Black figures have been consistently misrepresented and erased from official historical record and discourse in the province and in Canada. Other of her more biographical projects speak to her experience as a Black woman growing up in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and what she called the “eclipsed histories” of Asian, Black and Indigenous people living there in the '70s to '90s.

A meeting room in the sxʷeŋ’xʷəŋ taŋ’exw James Bay Library Branch is named the Mifflin Wistar Study Room.

For more historical resources on Black experiences and the contributions of Black people to cultural, political and economic life in BC and Victoria click here.