Remembering Olympic gold medallist in the Decathlon and pro-football player Milt Campbell during Black History Month, 2021

This is Mario Geo's 1967 Toronto Star photograph of American Olympic gold medalist and ex-pro football Milt Campbell and his family, residents of Cooksville, Ontario, moving back to New Jersey to join in the Civil Rights movement following the Newark Riots that year. 

Campbell was the first Black decathlete ever to win the gold medal, in the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. Campbell played one season of football for the Cleveland Browns before being fired by the team's coach Paul Brown, according to Campbell because of his marriage to a white woman. Determined to continue to play football, Campbell found himself welcomed by Canada and the CFL, playing for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Toronto Argonauts until his retirement from football in 1964. Upon his return to the United States, he started a community centre and co-founded the Chad School in Newark, which had a specific focus on Black history and culture.

Campbell was inducted into the United States Olympic Hall of Fame in 1992, and he died in 2012, in Georgia, from complications related to prostate cancer. 

Campbell's life and career were extraordinary, and should, in all fairness, have been the subject of a major biopic by now. Perhaps one of the brilliant young screenwriters and directors making films today—in either of our two countries—will rediscover this story, and start writing. Check out this excellent video here. 

Remembering Canada's Black Loyalists during Black History Month, 2021

A detail from John Singleton Copley's "The Death of Major Pierson, 6 January 1781" (1783) features a Black Loyalist soldier fighting on the British side. During Black History Month in Canada, it's worth remembering that the Black Loyalists—former American slaves who joined the British side in the War of Independence—were among the original non-Native Canadians, and should be counted among Canada's founders and settlers, in spite of the terrible struggles they endured, against everything from the violent weather to various forms of institutionalized racism, in a new country that promised them acceptance and land, and frequently shirked on both counts. Many of the Loyalists eventually left Canada, travelling to Africa and settling in Freetown, in Sierra Leone. Those who remained, and established themselves in Nova Scotia and Upper Canada, contributed to the evolving fabric of the new nation. Until relatively recently, their achievements and histories have been downplayed in favour of Canada's (predominantly white European colonial) history.

The coat of arms of the Black Loyalist Heritage Society of Shelburne, Nova Scotia were granted by the Canadian Heraldic Authority in 2006, and the elements are as follows—

The shield: "Sable between three Loyalist civil coronets a ship’s wheel with four spokes in saltire Argent." The crest: "A demi-lion Or gorged of a Loyalist military coronet and holding between its paws an anchor Sable." The supporters: "Two lions Or each gorged of a Loyalist civil coronet Gules, the leaves Vert, and standing on a rock set with mayflowers proper."