After leaving Halifax, he founded the Pan-African movement. But his story has been largely lost

Nearly 125 years ago, a man named Henry Sylvester Williams helped create Pan-Africanism, a global movement dedicated to African independence and unity that would inspire leaders ranging from W.E.B. Du Bois to Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X. 

Just a few years earlier, Williams was a student at Dalhousie University, likely living in the north end of Halifax as part of the city's African Nova Scotian community. 

During his remarkable life, Williams became a lawyer who practiced in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Trinidad and Tobago, and was one of the first people of African descent to be elected to public office in Britain.

While much is known about the impact of the Pan-African movement, Williams' time in Nova Scotia is still a bit of a mystery. 

Born in 1869, Williams grew up in Trinidad and Tobago. He was educated there and taught in schools around the country until the age of about 21, said Isaac Saney, a historian and director of the transition year program at Dalhousie University. 

Williams left for the United States in 1890 but little is known about his time there. Saney said it is likely he would have participated in political meetings given his political inclinations later on.

Saney said meetings would have been held at that time against lynching as well as to address the dismantling of Black rights won during the Reconstruction era.

Barry Cahill, an independent historian and former senior archivist at the Nova Scotia Archives, contributed a chapter on Williams to a collection of essays — The African Canadian Legal Odyssey published in 2012.

Cahill said his research leads him to believe Williams met prominent Quebec politician, Sir Henri-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière, possibly while working as a porter on a train in the United States. De Lotbinière intervened to get him into Dalhousie Law School.

According to Cahill, de Lotbinière was a progressive and likely had more enlightened views of race than others of his generation.

"He took up Williams's cause with the dean of the law school, Richard Weldon, who was a conservative MP at that time," Cahill said.

"They knew each other and I think he intervened on behalf of Williams and to get him in to the law school, I think that's what happened."

There were long established maritime trade links between the Caribbean and Nova Scotia at the time, Saney said, and university records show that Caribbean students were already studying at Dalhousie during the period.

Time in Halifax

Not a great deal is known about Williams' interactions in the one to two years he lived in Halifax.

Saney said there is no proof but there are certain fairly safe assumptions that can be made about his life during that period.

He would likely have interacted with other Black people on campus such as James Robinson Johnson, the first African Nova Scotian to graduate from any university.

Johnson went on to become the first African Nova Scotian lawyer to practice in the province.

According to Saney, it's possible Williams, like Johnson, may also have lived in the north end of Halifax which would have had the highest concentration of people of African descent in Canada at that time.

Saney said it is hard to believe that Williams would not have had interactions with members of the African Nova Scotian community but there are no letters, journals or recorded oral histories to substantiate them.

"Even when certain histories of Nova Scotia and textbooks are written, you have very little mention of Black history and very little mention of Indigenous history, much less women and working-class history," Saney said.

"So I think it's the norm that he wouldn't have been recorded."

Some have speculated that Williams helped found the Maritimes' Coloured Hockey League in 1895, but Cahill was unable to find solid evidence to support that belief through his research. 

Calling Williams the "father of organized political Pan-Africanism," Saney said it would be hard to believe he didn't have conversations on Pan-Africanism with Johnson and others during his time in Halifax.

Leaving for London

In 1896, facing difficulties with his courses at Dalhousie and perhaps frustrated by the limitations of life in Halifax, Williams headed to the centre of the British Empire and the crucible of many new movements  — London.

Once in London, he enrolled in law at Kings College and was a lecturer at the temperance society.

Hakim Adi is a professor of the history of Africa and the African diaspora at the University of Chichester in the U.K. and the author of Pan-Africanism: A History. He said Williams and Alice Kinloch, a South African activist, co-founded the African Association in 1897.

He said Kinloch also inspired Williams to go on to convene the first Pan-African Conference in London in 1900.

Anti-African racism

In Adi's view, the experiences that Willams had in his life provide a context for his passion for tackling the pervasive anti-African racism that was affecting Africans and people of African descent at the time  when European powers were scrambling for African territory. 

"Remember, Williams had ...been to the three corners of that triangle, if you like, that spread across the Atlantic, from Africa to North America and Europe," Adi said.

"So he was aware of the problems of colonialism in the Caribbean, of racism in North America, racism in Britain and of colonialism in general."

According to Adi, being at the centre of the Empire Williams would have seen the racism of the day in the press and in the streets.

While in England, Williams married Agnes Powell, a white woman, and Adi said this would have caused even more racism to be directed toward him and his wife.

After the 1900 conference, Williams travelled to North America and the Caribbean again to set up local Pan-African associations.

The Cape Colony

On his return to England, he was called to the bar and then went on to Paris and eventually worked as the first Black barrister in the Cape Colony, now part of South Africa, from 1903 to 1905.

Eventually, Williams grew frustrated with racism in the Cape Colony and it was difficult for him to practice law. He returned to London and decided to run for public office, Adi said.

He joined the Liberal Party which, Adi said, was considered to be the party most supportive of the interests of Africans in that period, if "only in a very limited way," and ran for municipal office, perhaps as a step toward a parliamentary run.

In 1906, Williams was elected as one of the first Black councillors in London and the first Black councillor for the City of  Westminster.

Return to Trinidad

Shortly thereafter, Williams again uprooted himself and headed back to his homeland with his wife in 1908.

The reasons for the move are not known but Adi said he may have felt he could have made a difference there.

"I think if you're politically committed,  you make your choices based on where you think you can achieve the most," Adi said.

"Maybe he felt, that he hadn't really made as much of an impact as he would wish in South Africa or maybe in Britain ... and that Trinidad, his own country, would be a place where he could make a difference."

He practiced law in Trinidad until his death four years later in 1911, he was only 42.

Adi said the fact that Williams didn't live long, didn't write much and that others—like W.E.B. Du Bois—lived longer and wrote more on the subject of Pan-Africanism, contributed to him being largely eclipsed by others in the movement.

Legacy

It's a sentiment shared by Barrington Walker, professor of history and vice-president of equity, diversity and inclusion at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont.

Walker said in his own way, Williams achieved a tremendous amount in the face of considerable odds. 

People of African descent in Canada had very difficult and restricted lives, Walker said, and it is important to be careful when assessing their importance.

Walker said more research needs to be done on Williams to assess his importance to global Pan-Africanism but he shows how important Pan-African thought was in the Canadian context.

"I think there is really this line from the issues confronted, maybe not necessarily the solutions proffered, but the issues confronted, by people in Henry Sylvester Williams' time and the things that continue to confront people of African descent in Canada and beyond," Walker said.

"There is a disturbing commonality across time about the issues that confront our community."

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.