A major educational strategy of Learners Portal is to engage students in learning by using personal examples of interest to them. By understanding local events students can connect with the broader regional, national and global issues that caused those events. We call this approach: local to global. During the late 1880’s, Jews from Europe began arriving in Cape Breton. They were mainly from Romania and Russia (included Poland) with some from Austria and Germany. They were fleeing persecution and economic hardship, and following opportunities that were springing up in the towns surrounding the new coalmines and later, the steel plant. Our intention is to help students understand the underlying nature and widespread incidence of all forms of prejudice by connecting the experiences that brought Jews to Cape Breton, to the more recent events of a similar nature that have occurred in Africa, Europe and elsewhere in the world. They should understand that all victims of prejudice have shared similar life experiences.
Within a short time, Jews assumed prominence in a variety of local businesses and today they play a significant role in virtually all aspects of Cape Breton life. By 1941 the Jewish population on Cape Breton reached its peak of 937 and was one of the largest in Atlantic Canada. To document this aspect of Jewish history, we intend to interview individuals from a cross section of the Jewish community.
This past year marked the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II and it afforded us an opportunity to reflect on the reasons so many Canadian soldiers fought and died in the struggle to defeat Nazi Germany. Young Canadians today must never forget the horrors of the Holocaust that brought death to more than six million Jews and other minorities of Europe. The Holocaust is an essential feature of Canadian history and social studies and, to that end; our initiative is part of a larger effort to make Holocaust education compulsory in the Nova Scotia social studies curriculum.
THE MANY FACES OF JIM CROW:
Stories Of Racial Discrimination In Twentieth Century Canada A Documentary Video And Oral History Project Vision and scope of the project:
Jim Crow refers to the practice of racial segregation that occurred in the United States during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In resistance to the civil rights acts of the post Civil War Reconstruction era in the United States, southern states adopted, in a piecemeal manner, a pattern of segregation that began with trains and other forms of public transportation. These so called Jim Crow laws eventually spread to all areas of racial contact and during the first half of the twentieth century they became part of a widespread system of racial discrimination throughout the United States.
In Canada, there were no Jim Crow laws and legalized system of racial segregation. Nevertheless, there was deep seated racism in Canada and an extensive "voluntary" system of segregation and other forms of racial discrimination developed that had many of the hallmarks of Jim Crow laws in the United States. In Nova Scotia, for example, the case of Viola Desmond illustrates the nature of the culture of racism in Canada and it has been the subject of a recent National Film Board documentary entitled Journey to Justice that aired on CBC television. In 1946, Viola Desmond refused to sit in the balcony designated exclusively for Blacks in a New Glasgow theater but, instead, took her seat on the ground floor where only whites were allowed to sit. After being forcibly removed from the theater and arrested, Viola was eventually found guilty of not paying the one-cent difference in tax on the balcony ticket from the main floor theater ticket.
The experience of Viola Desmond is only one of the many incidents of racism that profoundly affected the lives of African Canadians throughout the twentieth century. "The Many Faces of Jim Crow" documentary video and oral history project aims at recording the experiences of African Canadians who lived during the same period as Viola Desmond. The project will document the lives of these individuals in order to portray a deeper and more personalized understanding of racial discrimination in twentieth century Canada. One such individual and subject of our project is Wanda Robson, the sister of Viola Desmond, who, at age 76, is currently completing her Bachelor of Arts degree at Cape Breton University. Wanda has vivid memories of her life and she has developed a wide range of contacts with other African Canadians of her generation. We intend to interview some of these individuals and others in order to preserve and document their stories for the education of all Canadians. Our preliminary research indicates that many of the lives of African Canadians of Viola Desmonds’ generation serve as an example of how ordinary individuals were able to overcome racial discrimination and other hardships in their lives in order to gain self respect and human dignity in the African Canadian struggle for equality and justice.
Educational aims of the project:
"The Many Faces of Jim Crow" project is based on the pedagogical vision of our earlier and ongoing educational projects that stress a culturally inclusive and contextually integrated approach to Canadian history. Canadian history is multicultural and we believe that the diverse cultural and racial strands of this history should be woven into a single historical and learning context. African Canadian history, for example, should be part of the mainstream of Canadian history and it should be taught in our schools to all students. The current project is intended to be a valuable supplement to the Canadian history and social studies curriculum. It has obvious benefit for African Canadian history (Nova Scotia grade 11, for example) but it is also intended for all students of Canadian history and, as such, it will be an appropriate addition to almost any course in Canadian history that is currently being taught. We envisage developing a specific set of learning activities and lesson plans to be used in conjunction with the documentary video. These activities and teaching strategies together with additional primary resources will be available to teachers and students either through a separate publication or our Learners Portal web site. Project producers and development team:
The project will be produced by Dr. Graham Reynolds (graham_reynolds@capebretonu.ca) and Dr. Richard MacKinnon (richard_mackinnon@capebretonu.ca) at Cape Breton University in partnership with Folkus Atlantic Productions in Sydney, Nova Scotia. This partnership has recently produced The Peopling of Atlantic Canada CD ROM which has been purchased by the Nova Scotia Department of Education for all schools in the province. "The Many Faces of Jim Crow" project will adopt a similar organizational approach as The Peopling of Atlantic Canada CD ROM and it will employ a team of specialized personnel including African Canadians and it will call upon the expertise of highly respected scholars in the areas of Canadian and African Canadian history. The development team will serve as a valuable apprenticeship for project members and it will hopefully prepare them for future jobs in the areas of education and information technology.
