Crossing the Border: A Free Black Community in Canada - Book Report/Review Example

Book Review In his celebrated book Crossing the border: A free Black community in Canada, Sharon A. Roger Hepburn tells the story of Buxton's settlers, united in their determination to live free from slavery and legal repression. Whereas there is very little written about the Black Canadian community history, the book by Sharon A. Roger Hepburn fills this vacuum and it deals with the Buxton settlement in Ontario. In a close analysis of the importance of this book in the background of the Black Canadian community history, it becomes lucid that the work ultimately represents a useful contribution. Thus, Crossing the Border is generally acknowledged by scholars as a fundamental book that chronicles the history of Buxton, one of the most successful all-black settlements in nineteenth-century Canada. In her work, Sharon A. Roger Hepburn traces the evolution of educational institutions, businesses, and political structures in Buxton in the mid-1800s and the focus of the author is on the degree to which black settlers achieved autonomy and the control over their lives in a hostile white environment. The author undertakes an important study of Buxton, Ontario, through a comprehensive study of the manuscripts, newspapers, census records, deeds, maps, and other materials and she is effective in recreating a detailed story of the Black Canadian community through the lives of individual people. According to the author, the Black Canadian community, roughly twelve miles south Chatham, close to the shores of Lake Erie in Raleigh Township, Kent Country, espoused freedom and hope for the future and accepted blacks who were single, married, and widowed; young and old; male and female; freeborn and fugitive. "This study chronicles Buxton from its conception and founding through its first decade. A group of individuals, united in their determination to build a heaven for those fleeing slavery and repressive legal statutes, formed themselves into a community that offered social and economic opportunity. Overcoming initial opposition from neighboring whites and backed by the Presbyterian Church of Canada and philanthropic Canadians of both races, Buxton grew steadily in population and stature." (Hepburn, 1) Therefore, Hepburn provides a convincing account of the Black Canadian community settlement in Buxton, Ontario, and she is effective in explaining why Buxton succeeded when other settlements failed. A careful reading of Crossing the border: A free Black community in Canada by Sharon A. Roger Hepburn confirms that the author eloquently traces the development of Buxton from its conception and founding, and her main focus is to give an explanation for its status as the 'most successful all-black community established in Canada before the U.S. Civil War.' In her attempt to establish the point that the Black Canadian community was the most successful all-black community established in Canada, the author compares this community with similar communities in Canada, such as Dawn and Wilberforce and even with the free Black communities in the US including Brooklyn, Illinois and the Beech and Roberts settlements in Indiana. "Racial oppression forced blacks - divided by color, class, gender, and background - to unite for protection, companionship, assistance, and development. Blacks could not stem the growth of racial hostility but could survive it by seeking refuge and strength in communities. In response to an increasingly weak position, blacks in Canada and the United States did not exhibit docile passivity but instead built and strengthened their community institutions and community consciousness, protecting themselves from white hostility with tightly knit social and family units." (Hepburn, 2) Thus, the author has been effective in tracing the comprehensive history of the community and she gives reasons for the development of the community as the most successful all-black community established in Canada. Through the comparisons with the various similar communities in Canada and the free Black communities in the US, the author establishes the success of the Black Canadian community. In all these comparisons, the attempt of the author is ultimately to credit Canadian legal structures and political receptivity to fugitive slaves. She also acknowledges William King's paternalist approach to free Black settlement with the stability, relative prosperity and longevity of Buxton as a community. According to Moynagh, "While she does represent the racist opposition to the founding of Buxton in ways that belie the mythology of Canada as Canaan, and while her portrait of King, an abolitionist who became a slave-holder upon marriage, is not uncritical, Hepburn writes against the grain of recent Black historiography and without explicitly engaging in the debates her work addresses. Nor does Hepburn offer any discussion of methodology; Crossing the Border is fairly conventional narrative history." (Moynagh) While dealing with the history of the struggle and growth of the Black Canadian community, Crossing the Border undertakes an important analysis of the story of its ordinary men and women who were behind the community's development to the status as the 'most successful all-black community established in Canada before the U.S. Civil War.' Thus, the author traces the history of the building up of the community in its entirety and she maintains that Buxton's independence as an all-black settlement in Canada allowed it to evolve into a true community. Significantly, Buxton offered its residents the fellowship of a majority black population, similar to that of any other community. One of the most central aspects of the book by Hepburn is that it credits the ordinary men and women of the community in its attempt to acknowledge the development of the community as the most influential all-black community. "This study of Buxton brings to the fore the story of ordinary men and women who struggled to create a community for themselves and their families amid a world dominated by whites. A base on which social history is built is that of historical demography. Family reconstruction through statistical analysis of census enumerations and other vital records allows historians to examine specific families, thus bringing them into historical narrative The story of Buxton is, above all else, the story of those individuals whose sweat and tears were shed making it what it was." (Hepburn, 7) Therefore, Hepburn's historical survey in Crossing the Border has an important role in acknowledging the stories of the ordinary men and women of the community, whose sweat and tears were shed in making Buxton what it became. Significantly, her use of rich, archival materials ranging from census data and marriage records, to maps, deeds, newspapers, voters lists, and association records etc helped Hepburn in yielding a detailed picture of the Black settlers in Buxton. In her book, Hepburn represents the educational pursuits of the Black settlers in Buxton, the place of churches in the community, the types of employment that the settlers engaged in, and offers a depiction of community structure. All these details given in the book ultimately highlight the ethic of self-reliance that developed in Buxton. "In fact, the central contradiction in Buxton's founding between King's declared interest in creating the conditions for independent Black citizens to thrive and the considerable evidence of his effort to control every facet of community life is in some sense mirrored in the structure of Hepburn's book, which focuses on King in the first five chapters, and on the community members themselves in the remaining five." (Moynagh) Other important interesting details narrated in the book by Hepburn include the presence of several interracial couples in the community, the relatively high literacy rates, and the racial integration of Buxton's churches and schools. In conclusion, Crossing the border: A free Black community in Canada by Sharon A. Roger Hepburn is an essential historical document about the development of Buxton from its conception and founding and it contributes to the studies of independent African American communities which transform one's knowledge of African Americans in freedom. The author has been highly effective in establishing how the Black Canadian community achieved the status as the 'most successful all-black community established in Canada before the U.S. Civil War'. Thus, Hepburn effectively explains why Buxton succeeded when other settlements failed, through a descriptive analysis comparing the various black communities in Canada and the United States. If the descriptive narrative undertaken in the book was accompanied by analyses as well as an explicitly theorized historiography, Hepburn's book could have achieved greater success. Apart from such inconsequential limitations, Crossing the border effectively explains why Buxton succeeded when other settlements failed, through a convincing account of the Black Canadian community settlement in Buxton, Ontario. Works Cited Hepburn, Sharon A. Roger. Crossing the border: a free Black community in Canada. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 2007. P 1. Moynagh, Maureen. "(Black) Community Historiography." Canadian Literature. Sept 29, 2009. . Read More