Morgan Campbell reflects on his family legacy in his memoir My Fighting Family — read an excerpt now
My Fighting Family will be available on Jan. 23, 2024
Morgan Campbell is an journalist and a senior contributor at CBC Sports. He was a sports writer at the Toronto Star for over 18 years. His work highlights where sports intersects with off-the-field issues like race, culture, politics and business. His memoir My Fighting Family tells the incredible history of his family's battles across the generations and reckons with what it means being a Black Canadian with strong American roots.
Campbell traces family's roots in the rural American south to their eventual cross-border split and the grudges and squabbles along the way.
From the south side of Chicago in the 1930s to the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War and Morgan's life dealing with the racial tensions in Canada — My Fighting Family is about journeying to find clarity in conflict.
My Fighting Family will be available on Jan. 23, 2024. Read an excerpt below.
Every morning, I sensed her eyes on me when I boarded at the city transit terminal in downtown Windsor. As the bus rumbled through the tunnel to Detroit, I could feel her stealing glances. We'd unload quickly on the U.S. side to funnel through customs, then back on the bus for the loop around downtown. I'd hop off at Washington and Lafayette. Short walk from there to the Detroit News, where I was working an internship. She'd exit a few stops earlier, closer to Congress, after she'd peeked at me a few more times. At 22, I knew an appraising look when I received one, and this woman's eyes said she wanted to know something about me.
Certain details, we could each glean from routine. We both lived in Windsor and worked in Detroit, like everybody making their morning commute on the Transit Windsor Tunnel Bus. She was Black by racial category, light brown by phenotype, high yella by vernacular. Lighter than a paper bag but darker than coffee creamer, and still looking at me like a piece of a puzzle she needed to solve.
Growing up near Toronto, if I met a medium-to-fair-skinned Black person old enough to be my parent but who spoke without an accent, they were usually old-school African-American Diaspora Black Canadians, from Nova Scotia or southwest Ontario.
She was at least 45. Probably closer to 50. Whatever she wanted with me, it certainly wasn't that. I figured she was trying to profile me the way I had profiled her. Growing up near Toronto, if I met a medium-to-fair-skinned Black person old enough to be my parent but who spoke without an accent, they were usually old-school African-American Diaspora Black Canadians, from Nova Scotia or southwest Ontario. My Uncle Ken had a knack for attracting folks like those into his circle. He used to play softball with a trio of brothers, caramel-coloured, last name Chase, born and raised in Windsor. The oldest, Rick, worked with Uncle Ken, driving buses for the TTC. Another was into judo. The youngest, John, was an actor and singer who sometimes hosted The Polka Dot Door on TVO. If they needed a sister to complete their set of siblings, they could have drafted the woman from the Tunnel Bus.
As for me, I walked around downtown Windsor, looking like I belonged, which is probably why she paid attention. I was young enough to be her son, but wasn't. I was somebody's son, though, and she wanted to know whose.
After about three weeks, we exchanged eye contact and greetings. She lobbed a softball conversation-starting question, and we were off: talking about her office job in Detroit, and my summer gig at the News. When she told me she grew up in Windsor, I asked if she knew the Chase brothers.
"Ricky and Johnie? Of course I know them," she said. "We all came up together. They lived on Mercer
Street. Right downtown. How do you know them?"
"They're friends with my uncle," I said. "They come to his birthday party every summer. John used to tell me all his football stories."
"Are you guys from here?"
"No," I said. "I'm from Mississauga."
"Oh," she said. "What's your last name?"
Only four words, but so many layers to that question. In Mississauga, where most of the Black kids I knew were first-generation Canadian with Caribbean immigrant parents, it had several permutations.
Which island are you from?
Where are your parents from?
Where are you really from?
Sometimes people asked out of good-faith curiosity, but often the question carried undertones. They weren't just seeking information, but a way to categorize me. Windsorites wanted my last name. Torontonians wanted to know my island. These were bigger questions of belonging. Different cities, different ways of asking, "Are you one of us?"
Windsorites wanted my last name. Torontonians wanted to know my island. These were bigger questions of belonging. Different cities, different ways of asking, 'Are you one of us?'
The woman on the bus figured I was, which made sense. Her family and community had more history in Canada than my folks did, but we shared Black American roots. Her folks were as likely as my sisters and I were to have been baptized in an AME church, or have grandparents who attended a segregated school, just on opposite sides of the border. So she asked my last name and probably expected to hear an answer she recognized — Shadd or Shreve or Hurst or McCurdy, something that would mark me as a descendant of the fugitive slaves who came to Canada via the Underground Railroad. My family did cross into Canada at the Detroit River's narrowest point, we just did it four generations later, in a car, and kept driving, all the way to Toronto. I was one of them, but not quite.
"My last name's Campbell," I said.
"Oh," she said, looking puzzled. "I don't know any Campbells." I could empathize. I didn't know many Campbells, either.
Excerpted from MY FIGHTING FAMILY: Borders and Bloodlines and the Battles that Made Us by Morgan Campbell to be published by McClelland & Stewart, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada. Copyright 2024 © Morgan Campbell. Reprinted by permission of the publisher
