A taste of history as Fort Erie honours civil rights legacy

For Lezlie Harper, a celebration of Fort Erie’s history with the American civil rights movement could only be capped off with a certain special treat: vanilla ice cream.

Harper, a Fort Erie resident who offers educational experiences about Niagara’s Black history, was at a Saturday celebration of the 120th anniversary of the Niagara Movement. There are stories from back in the old Jim Crow days that Black people could only get vanilla ice cream on July 4, and the rest of the year they had to settle for other flavours.

“I invite all of you to have a vanilla ice cream cone,” she told the crowd at Waverly Beach Park.

On July 11, 1905, a group of African Americans led by W.E.B. Du Bois met in Buffalo to discuss how to push for civil rights south of the border.

Meetings over the following days were moved to the Erie Beach Hotel, in part to give the participants some seclusion from Booker T. Washington and his followers, who promoted a different, more conservative approach to advancing civil rights.

Participants in the Niagara Movement took a pledge and also created a declaration of principles. The pledge called on participants to “fight in freedom” and to not equivocate or “retreat a single inch.”

The discussions in Buffalo and Fort Erie laid the groundwork for what would later become the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, now widely known as the NAACP.

Over the years the organization and its members have played a key role in major civil rights achievements, including the Brown vs. the Board of Education case that led to the desegregation of school boards, the Montgomery Bus Boycott and various legislation like the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act in the United States.

It remains active today, and in fact held its national convention over the weekend.

“There is still the need for all of us, whether we are in Canada or in the United States, or wherever we are in the world, to remember the humanity of all mankind,” said NAACP chair Leon Russell in a video tribute to Fort Erie from the convention.

In 2015 the town installed a plaque at Waverly Beach Park to commemorate the Niagara Movement. Fort Erie also received a letter from then-President Barack Obama. In addition to the 120th anniversary of the meetings, this weekend also marked the 10th anniversary of the plaque unveiling.

While Harper said she was glad to see an event held to mark the anniversary, she said much more can and should be done.

“Every 10 years isn’t enough. We need to be celebrating it every year,” she said.

Fort Erie Mayor Wayne Redekop said the plaque and the event is a reminder not just of the rich history the town is a part of, but of the shortcomings that continue to exist.

“We live in a strange time when the thought of diversity and inclusion is somehow bad,” he said.

“We all have different talents, different perspectives, different contexts, different ways about doing things. And it’s the differences that make society, or has the potential to make society, a great place for all of us.”

The public is also encouraged to visit the Centennial branch at the Fort Erie Public Library on Monday at 1 p.m. for a showing of an hour-long PBS documentary called ‘The Niagara Movement: The Early Battle for Civil Rights.’

A member of PBS will also be on hand to introduce the documentary and answer any questions.

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