Entrepreneurial Appetite

Borderland Blacks: A Conversation with Dann J. Broyld, PhD

• Langston Clark • Season 6 • Episode 11

Share episode

The American-Canadian borderlands hold a special significance in Black history that few of us fully understand. In this illuminating conversation with Dr. Dan J. Broyld, author of "Borderland Blacks," we explore how Rochester, NY and St. Catharines, Ontario became pivotal centers of Black freedom, entrepreneurship, and transnational identity during the final years of slavery.

Dr. Broyld offers fascinating geographic insights into why Rochester—rather than closer border cities like Buffalo—became the optimal Underground Railroad hub. Just far enough from the border to avoid the concentration of slave catchers but close enough to facilitate escape, Rochester's position combined with its strong abolitionist culture created the perfect conditions for Black liberation work. Frederick Douglass's strategic 25-year residence there, where he established his newspaper North Star, exemplifies how Black leaders utilized borderland spaces to maximize their freedom and impact.

The conversation takes an illuminating turn when Dr. Broyld reframes historical figures through a contemporary lens. Harriet Tubman emerges not just as a freedom fighter but as remarkably modern—"global, green, and gender aware." Her seven years in St. Catharines, her expert navigation of natural landscapes, and her strategic decision to seek freedom under "the Queen's soil" rather than "Uncle Sam's land" reveal a sophisticated understanding of international politics and environmental knowledge that resonates with today's concerns.

Perhaps most compelling are the stories of borderland entrepreneurs like John W. Lindsay and Austin Stewart, who built significant wealth and community resources despite beginning with nothing. Their ability to create grocery stores, blacksmithing businesses, and other enterprises challenges simplistic narratives about Black economic development post-slavery. The transnational character of these communities—celebrating August 1st (British Emancipation Day) more enthusiastically than July 4th and using cutting-edge technology like suspension bridges—reveals how borderland Blacks were, in many ways, ahead of their time.

Discover how these historical Black communities embodied Afrofuturist principles before the term existed, utilizing the most advanced technology of their era and creating transnational networks that transcended national boundaries. Their story continues to resonate today, reminding us that movement itself can be liberation, and that Black identity has always been global in scope and vision.

Support the show

https://www.patreon.com/c/EA_BookClub

Speaker 1:

Hey everyone, thank you again for your support of Entrepreneurial Appetite. Beginning this season, we are inviting our listeners to support the show through our Patreon website. The founding 55 patrons will get live access to our monthly discussions for only $5 a month. Your support will help us hire an intern or freelancer to help with the production of the show. Of course, you can also support us by giving us five stars, leaving a positive comment or sharing the show with a few friends. Thank you for your continued support. Welcome to another throwback episode of Entrepreneurial Appetite. In this episode of Entrepreneurial Appetite's Black Book Discussions, we feature a conversation with Dr Dan J Boreal, author of Borderland Blacks, two Cities in the Niagara Region During the Final Years of Slavery. I want to take this time now to introduce our special guest, dan J Boreal, who is the author of Borderland Blacks. And Dan, if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, and then we'll get into a deeper conversation.

Speaker 2:

Sure Cheers. Well, I want to thank you for having me. I definitely appreciate being on with you today. I'm Dan J Broyled. I'm an associate professor of African-American history at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. I earned my PhD in 19th century United States and African and Diaspora History at Howard University. My work focuses on the American-Canadian borderlands, issues of Black identity, migration, transnational relations, as well as oral history, material culture and museum community relations. My book is Borderland Blacks. I just got my copy yesterday so I'm really excited to see the book and the book just primarily looks at two cities Rochester, new York, and St Catharines, ontario. St Catharines, canada, weston, but St Catharines, ontario today and it looks at those two Black communities on the tail end of the Niagara Underground Railroad or we let you tell the story of borderland Blacks in these two cities.

Speaker 1:

Tell us a little bit about how you got to be where you are and what your interest is in Rochester and St Catharines.

Speaker 2:

Sure. So first of all, I'm from Rochester, new York, and growing up some 80 miles from the Canadian border. I constantly crossed into Canada as a youngster. In those times no passport was necessary, no enhanced license, only a birth certificate or a driver's license was necessary to get in Canada. So this made passes between the two nations seamless.

Speaker 2:

I went to Canada so much when I was a kid that I remember asking my mother if I was American or Canadian, because I had no idea. My father once told me I was made in Canada. I have no idea what that means, but that's what he told me, and so that doesn't give me dual citizenship. But my mom, you know, replied that you know, I was indeed an American, but I had Canadian influences and that stuck with me throughout my collegiate studies and throughout the research of this book.

Speaker 2:

And so in many ways I am a borderland Black, growing up in Rochester, new York, on the fringes, if you will, of the American Canadian borderlands, on the fringes, if you will, of the American-Canadian borderlands. But it's very interesting, you know, because I felt this way and I felt like this transnational with all these kind of different exposures because of the Canadian border it wasn't, rochester wasn't talked about in that manner in the historiography, in the historical studies and historical treatments. You would almost think that Rochester was more inland or nowhere near a border the way it was spoke up. And so I really wanted to change this dynamic with my book and place Rochester into the borderlands. We know that Buffalo and Niagara Falls are kind of considered borderland towns. Well, I think that Rochester is for various reasons, particularly its connections with those Black folks in St Catharines. It was also kind of situated before the Civil War in the borderlands as well.

Speaker 1:

So, just so the audience knows, dan is from Rochester and I'm from Buffalo. Having been born in Buffalo, to me the city that would be the black city other than New York, of course right, or Harlem in New York, would be Buffalo. So it was surprising to me to see that really Rochester was the place where black liberation or black freedom to Canada, that that was the connecting point, and not Buffalo. Can you talk about how and why that happened, or even, like I even think about, like Detroit right, because Detroit is almost like right there and Rochester isn't? And I'm not hating on Rochester, but it's not a tier one city. I don't even think people would consider it a tier two city, but yet and still it has this historical significance. So what makes Rochester so special or an ideal place for that? That black freedom highway Right?

Speaker 2:

So there is a such thing as being too close to the border, and that's what Buffalo and Niagara Falls were.

Speaker 2:

When you're that close to the border, you know slave catchers would congregate in Buffalo and Niagara Falls to get their last shot at Blacks before they got into Canada. And so when you look at Rochester, rochester is kind of located in this, in this borderland space that is just far enough away from the border that it has access to Canada and it's not like Syracuse, where Syracuse is like too far. So Buffalo is too close, no-transcript frantic, if you will, in that area of the border. And so Rochester, like, from a geographical standpoint, it's a great place for Blacks. And two, it's the culture, right, I mean Frederick Douglass is there, you see these early anti-slavery societies, whether it's the culture, right, I mean Frederick Douglass is there, you see these early anti-slavery societies, whether it's the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society that has a lot of members in Rochester, or the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society as well. So it just kind of depends on the culture as well that really kind of populates the Rochester area.

Speaker 1:

Can you talk about Frederick Douglass and his significance? Being from Buffalo, I know a Rochester. People in Rochester go hard for Frederick Douglass yeah, I think, the rest of America or the rest of the world. When we think about Frederick Douglass, we think about he's from Maryland, we think about DC, like that era, the DMV, right. We don't think about him up here in, like Western New York. So talk about Douglass's relationship and significance to the story of Borderland Blacks.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so Frederick Douglass is a primary individual that I talk about. I actually start the book with a quote of his, and he's talking about this Niagara Underground railroad. Frederick Douglass lived in Rochester, new York, for some 25 years. He's also buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, new York, not too far from where his house was in Rochester, and so you know, frederick Douglass moves to Rochester really because of this guy, reverend Thomas James, and Reverend Thomas James was his reverend in New Bedford, massachusetts, and so he had previously owned a paper in Rochester called the Rights of man.

Speaker 2:

And so when Frederick Douglass came back from England after writing his first narrative, he came back from England, you know, came back to Massachusetts, and his reverend started to tell him about, like Rochester, new York, and that he had previously owned a paper there, and so Frederick Douglass thought it was a good place to start out his paper North America, which was Canada. Just in case, you know, things went awry or you know things got dangerous, he could escape into Canada, which he would do at least twice to safeguard his freedom, and so so, yeah, frederick Douglass is the key person that's really talked about in this book, and he has a friend in St Catharines by the name of Hiram Wilson. And he says in his last narrative he says that you know, ideally he'd like to send fugitives to this guy Hiram Wilson. And he says in his last narrative he says that you know, ideally he'd like to send fugitives to this guy Hiram Wilson, in St Catharines, ontario.

Speaker 2:

And so I just kind of followed what he, what he talked about. You know, and I would find that a lot of people in Rochester, new York, including Frederick Douglass, amy and Isaac Post, susan B Anthony, all like to send their fugitives ideally to this guy Hiram Wilson if they were like rushed or they needed to get them there expeditiously. And so Frederick Douglass I mean he lives, you know, in this area called South Avenue, on South Avenue in the city, which really overlooked the entire city and stuff like that so he had this kind of good posture in the city to kind of facilitate fugitives coming into Rochester and then getting them out to Canada.

Speaker 1:

We know about Frederick Douglass and I think also, popularly, people know about Harriet Tubman. Just for context, for the audience, I had the opportunity to introduce Dan when he did his talk at the University of Buffalo with a friend of mine who's my academic older brother, dr LeGarrette King, who was opening a center for the study of racial literacies and Black history at the University of Buffalo, and you gave, man, you gave probably the best description and honoring of Harriet Tubman that I've ever heard. It was beyond just the typical Black Moses. So could you just tell us a little bit about Harriet Tubman's role and your framing of who Harriet Tubman is?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so Harriet Tubman lived in St Catharines for some seven years and so, you know, we hear a lot about Harriet Tubman, kind of on the American border side, but we don't hear about her life in Canada. And so the way I frame Harriet Tubman, I frame her as the modern woman she's global, right, she leaves the United States for Canada, so she's global. In context, she has to understand too that this is transatlantic because it's British Canada, right, and so the rules are coming from England, right. So she's global, she's green. I mean, she knows how to use the stars and stuff like that. She knows how to navigate the landscape. So she's, she's, she's global, she's green.

Speaker 2:

And she's also gender aware. She's going to Canada. She says I'm leading Uncle Sam's land, I'm going to the Queen's soil, so that's a gender analysis, right? She's saying, well, basically, you know what can the Queen do for me? Right? She knows that you know Canada has abolished, or England has abolished, slavery in Canada with the Imperial Act of 1834. And so she understands that she can get, you know, racial liberation.

Speaker 2:

But she's also, you know, trying to get liberation, you know, for her sex and her gender, if you will, right? So she's saying I want to go somewhere where a queen's in charge, you know. And so she's basically the modern woman I mean. She's global, she's green and she's gender aware. If you're not those three things, I don't know what you're doing. What are you doing, right? And so you know, that kind of framing of Harriet Tubman, you know, kind of puts her in this kind of modern context. So you know, everyday people today can really kind of understand who she is and really she's ahead of her time. I mean that's quite futuristic to be, you know, that global, that green and that gender aware during this particular time, that green and that gender aware during this particular time.

Speaker 1:

One of the things I think that is really special about the book is the picture of Harriet Tubman that you were able to get and verify of her as a younger woman.

Speaker 2:

Can you talk about how you were able to get that picture and its significance and the story behind that? Yeah, so in 2017, I was contacted by the Smithsonian. In 2017, I was contacted by the Smithsonian. I mean, they just wanted to verify that the latest picture of Harriet Tubman that we now know is her was really her, and so I happened to be in Rochester my brother's a photographer and we kind of blew up the picture and threw some scarifications on her face.

Speaker 2:

The other thing is I didn't. I wanted to also get confirmation from the other Tubman scholars that this was Tubman. I wasn't going to go out on a limb by myself, right? It's like, oh, wait a minute, let's see what the other Tubman scholars are saying. But we did. We were able to confirm that the newest picture of Harriet Tubman is indeed her.

Speaker 2:

She was around the age of 43 to 46 in that picture age of 43 to 46 in that picture. And so you know it's great because I had written an article, I believe, in 2014, that Tubman was this modern person, and I believe that the picture just confirms what I was saying that she's pretty savvy and she because we have all of these kind of older pictures of Tubman and stuff like that, but I'm like, no, she was a go getter Right. I mean, she was really sharp. I think in many ways that picture articulates what I was writing about before I even knew that that picture existed. So I'm for so for me that the picture is kind of like affirmation, like oh yeah, yeah, I told you guys right, look here it is. And also it's coming on time, you know, for harriet tubman to be on the the $20 bill 2030. Tubman will go on the front of the the $20 bill, and demoted will be andrew jackson on the back of the bill, which is good, but I just don't want andrew he yeah that that's.

Speaker 2:

you know. I've written a piece about this, but it's, it's a match made in the US Treasury, if you was. I mean it's really a contradictory bill, with a liberator and a slaveholder, if you will, on the back of the bill. I mean it's unbelievable that they would even conceive of a bill in this way. The other thing is, you know, you have to understand that Tubman is a transnational right. She's not a national figure. She had to go to Canada for some seven years for her own liberation, for the liberation of people, right. You have to understand too that Tubman brought a lot of people to St Catharines. St Catharines had this colored village within it which was a metropolis, if you will, for Black entrepreneurs as well, and so Black people are really kind of serving their own community in this area of the colored village and Tubman, you know, brought a lot of those people to the colored village from the eastern shore of Maryland, right.

Speaker 1:

So Can you talk a little bit more about when Black people are fleeing enslavement or, in cases fleeing, fleeing the north of the United States, because the Canada, the north, the United States is still south and so you weren't safe. Necessarily, if you were still in the continental United States, you had to go to Canada. So can you talk about those folks migration from enslavement to entrepreneurship and what that looked like as they were going through Rochester and St Catharines?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's, that's a, that's a major deal, because you have to understand that these people didn't even own themselves. I love saying that they were self stolen property, like how do you not own yourself, right, like you know? So you stole you, right? What does that look like? So to steal you and then to get to Canada and then go on to own property and go on to vote and stuff like that is just you know, a grasp, if you will, a turn of events, right and so, and the reason why these people, these African-Americans and these blacks, they really recognize that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right, and so they do this through the American Revolution, they understand that the United States is fighting Britain, and so a lot of Blacks get free by fighting on the British side of the war. Some 20,000 fight for the British while some 5,000 fight for the Americans, so there's double triple the amount of people that are getting freed by the British. And so they recognize that the British are kind of a friend in the sense that they're fighting the Americans. And they also do this in the War of 1812, where the United States is fighting Great Britain again, and so from those two wars, like, blacks really realized like, ok, well, you know, yeah, canada and the British are better than the Americans, right, and so they kind of shoot to get their understanding that the British and Americans don't really like each other. And the British really, they really safeguard blacks once they get to Canada, so it's really safe to get there. There's very few instances where blacks are returned into via the Imperial Act of 1834. It's basically over for Americans kind of participants, partitioning of the British government to get their enslaved people back. And so what these Black people do in Canada, which they're really like maroons in a sense, they're maroon-like because they're all runaways. The more than half of the population that's in British Canada before the Civil War are descendants of people from the United States and are runaways, and so they're maroons and they build their own communities.

Speaker 2:

And even when it comes to things like schools, they didn't want to integrate, integrate their schools in this colored village. They really they. They voted to have separate schools and so this wasn't segregation, this was separation. They were saying we just want our tax monies, we want our own schools, we want to teach our own kids, and so those are maroon like acts. Right, let's say let's integrate it, we want to live among you. We got our, our colored community. We have our own barbershops, we have our own grocery stores and stuff like that. They're fine with that in St Catharines and that's what I really love about that black community in St Catharines is their wherewithal to live amongst themselves and to educate and to do business amongst themselves, where in Rochester they really were about integrating and making sure they got into the common schools or the school, the Rochester School District, and stuff like that. But in St Catharines, you know, the Blacks in the color village weren't concerned with these things at all.

Speaker 1:

I think that's interesting and I almost wonder. Frederick Douglass is a hardcore American. Yeah, he is, but he's he's leading people to Canada. So can you talk about that tension with Douglass? He's like we built this right. This is our place. We've been here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So Douglass, he really wanted Blacks to see themselves as brothers and sisters of the soil and stuff like that. But he understood that it was necessary to send, you know, some Blacks to Canada. He said it's kind of like trying to belt out the ocean with a teaspoon, but he has to kind of move these Blacks on for their own safety. So yeah, in a sense, you know, frederick Douglass is the kind of constant American. I argue in the book that you know he is a transnational just because of the way he is sending blacks to Canada and he understands, you know, different dynamics of the border and stuff like that. You have to understand that Frederick Douglass is from Maryland, a border state. He lives in Rochester on the border and so he understands, you know, borders and crossing them and what they can do. So while he was the kind of constant American, he also is positioning himself in this transnational way and he understands the need and necessity to get some Blacks to Canada, at least until the Civil War happens. Right.

Speaker 1:

So I'm, I'm reading the book and there are some holidays that I think black folk aren't aware of or have tensions with right now. So Juneteenth became a federal holiday was last year, so that's our freedom day, right. But what was interesting is that I think it was New York state abolished slavery on July 4th. Yeah, and I learned that reading the book, and so now I feel like being from Buffalo, I'm a little bit more okay with celebrating 4th of July, not necessarily for the United States, but at least I can say the state of the state that I was born in liberated black folk and I want you, if you can, talk about the holidays and their significance, even the day that England banned slavery and the celebrations that black folk had a recognition of that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so remember that. You know, black people celebrated the 4th of July primarily on the 5th of July, right, the day after that is predominantly because they were working on the 4th Right, they're serving black. Who serves the white people? Right, it's Black people most of the time, right. And so you know, while the white people are inebriated on the 5th, then Blacks are safe to celebrate right, like that's what generally happened. If you even look at what to the slave is, the 4th of July speech by Frederick Douglass is given on July 5th, right. So they celebrated the day after, right. And again, they don't feel comfortable celebrating on the day on the Fourth of July actual day because you know that's they're really not emancipated. But the other day that they celebrated predominantly before the Civil War is August 1st. August 1st commemorates the British government abolishing slavery throughout their empire.

Speaker 2:

The Imperial Act was decided upon in 1833. It would go into effect in 1834. And so that's the day that Blacks would celebrate in the United States. I mean sometimes in Buffalo and in Rochester. I mean you would have celebration. One time in Buffalo there was a celebration of some 10,000 people. It was actually scaring the white community, right. Like well, what are all these black people doing, getting together, right, but you have to understand that that holiday, august 1st, had no power in the United States.

Speaker 2:

So why are black people celebrating? Well, they recognize the liberation of their fellow Blacks in Canada and throughout the Caribbean. You have to understand that that act, that imperial act, it freed some 600,000 people in Jamaica, 800,000 overall. There's only 50 slaves in Canada that it freed Canada wasn't even mentioned in it because the British had thought that Canada had already got rid of slavery, and so it freed some 800000 people, primarily 600000 in Jamaica, 50 in Canada.

Speaker 2:

But black people, you know, they call it the West Indian Day in the United States and they're basically praising the British government for freeing slaves throughout the empire and trying to employ the United States to do the same thing. And so these were the largest gatherings of Black people before the Civil War and again, august 1st had no power in the United States. So in a sense, this makes them transnational in thinking how do we free black people everywhere? Right, we will celebrate freedom of black people in any state, right, any municipality. Right, you know it's. So these black people are getting together, you know, to to to really celebrate the British, but also ask the United States to to get its act together and move in that direction.

Speaker 1:

We talked a lot about Douglas Tubman and you mentioned some of the other names that aren't as known in history and I'm wondering if you could talk about some of the. I don't want to discredit them, but maybe they get framed as minor characters right in the story but they're actually major. So talk about those major minors, yeah.

Speaker 2:

I can't wait to talk about this yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, because I have two entrepreneurs. That's what I'm thinking about. One is John W Lindsay. I've actually written an article on him exclusively.

Speaker 2:

John W Lindsay was born free in Washington DC and he was captured into slavery at the age of seven and he would spend several years in the American South and actually when he was escaping slavery he wanted to go back to Washington DC but he decided to go up to Canada and so he arrives in St Catharines. He arrives penniless, they say right when he builds himself into the wealthiest Black person in St Catharines. He actually meets the first prime minister of Canada, john Donald, in St Catharines as well. But he bills his wealth through the owning of a grocery store which doubles as his house and two. He has all of these kind of side businesses as well. He's a blacksmith. He trains other black blacksmiths in St Catharines. He also has a beer company, but while he has this beer company that sells these kind of specialty beers lemon beer and stuff like that, he's also a trustee at the church and helps to build the AMB and BNB church in St Catharines. And so this guy is just dynamic and I thought that it was interesting and this is why I decided to write the article on him that he was born in the heart of freedom. He was born in Washington DC. In order to get the rights, liberties and immunities of an American, he had to go to Canada. I mean, I just found that, so you know, contradictory. And so John W Lindsay got to look him up. I mean, this guy, this guy's great man, so interesting. You know, I had a lot of material on him through newspapers and also he did two interviews, one with this guy, benjamin Drew, and another with this guy, samuel Howe, and so I got great interviews from him as well.

Speaker 2:

So, and the other person I'll mention is Austin Stewart. Austin Stewart was the first black businessman in Rochester, new York. Austin Stewart, for a time period, went to Canada, I mean. And two, austin Stewart was this rich. He was also a grocery store owner that doubled as his house, right. So both him and John W Lindsay are cut from the same cloth, right.

Speaker 2:

But he goes. He's the wealthiest man, the wealthiest black business owner in Rochester, and he stops his business and moves his family to Canada, and in Canada he tries to help out this fell settlement called the Wilberforce Colony, to help out this failed settlement called the Wilberforce Colony failed and he came back to Rochester and he was almost he was just ashamed that he had to return to Rochester broke Right. And so in, this guy builds back himself, right. I mean he gets a second opportunity. Some white business owners actually help him get his businesses started in Rochester.

Speaker 2:

And the other thing is too before he even left to Canada, I mean there were people he had a meat market and people were painting over his signs. I mean he literally went to the cops and was like we're going to find this individual and filed the individual, brought him to justice. I mean this guy was nothing to play with. And so Austin Stewart and John W Lindsay are these guys that kind of go under the radar. But hopefully their popularity will continue to grow, perhaps, if you will, via my book, right, yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1:

Get the book now. Yeah, I can't remember all the names of the people that you mentioned. There's a lot. There's women in there, there's men in there. There's a lot of people in the book and so I just I appreciate that you honored. You clearly honored Douglas, you clearly honored Tubman, but there are all of these other figures who, at some point in the migration of Black people from the United States or from Rochester to St Catharines, that played a role in there. Some of these people are. I mean, there was one guy who was living in Syracuse and then moved, or you know what I mean. There's a lot of connections between the other cities, but people knew that Rochester and St Catharines were pivotal points.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think you're mentioning Jeremiah Logan, right? Yes, that ran away from Tennessee. He goes to St Catherine's first, owns property there and then goes to Rochester. So people just think that you know the border, you know people kind of talk about the Underground Railroad as a one way flow from the United States to Canada. But there's actually, you know the border is, a two way door right, and so people sometimes go to Canada first and then come back and go back and forth and stuff like that, and it's certainly what Jeremiah Logan does and he winds up in Syracuse sending people back through his old stopping grounds of Rochester and St Catherine's. I mean, this is like it's amazing how that happens.

Speaker 1:

So the concept of lifting as you climb. Here's a quote that stood out to me in the book. I think it says light on the fact that, even though Black folk were moving to Canada or and migrations in search of political agency to secure their freedom, neither America nor Canada delivered Blacks from the flux of their erratic lives, and I think that speaks to what you were talking about. Sometimes you'd have to come back, or sometimes you might start in St Catharines and come back, or sometimes you might start in St Catharines and come back, or it wasn't easy, but these people persevered and still existed so that we could exist today, right.

Speaker 2:

You have to understand something too that movement is a part of liberation. If you can move right, if you know what I mean, that's liberating. The fact that Black people are doing so much international travel today, that's liberating. It fact that black people are doing so much international travel today, that's that's liberating. It opens your minds to different things. The fact that these black people are living in the borderlands and have, you know, connections, if you will, across the border, which is really transatlantic, being in British Canada, and so that's really dynamic in movement, you know, allows you to remain liberated. We can move away, go in between and oscillate between. I mean that's really dynamic.

Speaker 2:

You know, I make the point in the book too, in a kind of underlying way, that these people are Afrofuturist, right, these people are riding the most modern technology to Canada. The trains, right, the Underground Railroad Right Is the most. The railroad is the most modern technology. They would use any tool to really liberate themselves. They're also going across these modern bridges the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge. It opened in 1848 and it had railroad passage, added railroad passage in 1855. And so Blacks could walk to Canada, they could ride a train to Canada, they could take a carriage to Canada, or they could take a boat. That's really dynamic, considering, in the Detroit frontier, of going over the Detroit River. The Ambassador Bridge wasn't built to 1929. The Detroit River, the Ambassador Bridge wasn't built to 1929.

Speaker 2:

And so these Black people have bridges that they can go over the St Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge and also the Queenston Lewiston Suspension Bridge as well. They can go over to liberate themselves. I mean, those are modern, you know, feats of technology, right, that are really helping. You know they were built for commerce but they're really helping out Black people as well. Yeah, you guys built them for commerce, but we're going to use them as well for our own liberation. How about that? The other thing is, too, they're building these bridges because you would, you know, on a ship you would fall over the fall. So they were kind of forced to be the geographical area that they were in. So they had to build these bridges. But Black people were using these things for liberation, there's no question about it. Harriet Tubman, you know, knew the bridge, you know the same, or, excuse me, the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge so well, you know she could determine when she was halfway over it, by the rivets, if you will, in the bridge. I mean, she knew that bridge.

Speaker 1:

So I think about three themes based upon prior conversations seeing you give the talk and Buffalo reading the book. Even hearing you speak. Now One is Afro. They're futurists because they had to use the latest technology to get to where they wanted to get. Imagine being a slave from Mississippi to deep South. You've gone from the deep South to the Northern part of the United States. Now you're looking at the suspension bridge and you've never seen anything like that ever in your life. That's like getting on an airplane for the first time. For some people.

Speaker 2:

That's scary, it's futuristic. Yeah, remember too that they're winding up in places like Philadelphia, new York City. I mean I see people today when I go to New York City looking up in Times Square like, oh man, what is this? I mean, imagine that You're from some rural area in Mississippi or Georgia or the Carolinas and you wind up in New York City or Philadelphia or something like that. You just time travel, like you live with time travel. And then, too, the white people are more liberal people and stuff like that. I mean that's time traveling, that's ahead of their time. That they're even, you know, positioning themselves that way in a racial way.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Yeah, no, it's good, it's good, it's good. Another thing is transnational. So they weren't just thinking about where they were, they had some type of global mentality where they frame their freedom, which is interesting.

Speaker 1:

The other thing is and you talked about this with Tudman, they're naturalists for you to know. They weren't on the train the whole time, they were in the woods. They had, they had shit in the woods. You know what I mean? Yeah, in order to get their freedom, and I just appreciate the bravery, because I think sometimes modern, modern black folk, we have this, this box of orthodoxy that we try to fit in. There are brothers and sisters right now who had businesses where they're traveling abroad. They might spend half the year in the United States, a half year halfway around the world. We got brothers and sisters who are starting businesses, starting nonprofits, to get Black people reconnected to the outdoors. You know what I mean. We got Black folk working in tech and so all of these things that we do that the world tells us that we're not into all of this, deeply rooted in our history, like that's us.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, oh my God, yeah, absolutely yeah, because I mean that's us. Yeah, oh my God, yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah, because I mean that's the thing too that you know, sometimes with other rural people think that looking up at the North Star is new to the African-Americans in the Deep South. Since Africa, we've been looking up at the North. I mean it's not a new thing, like you know. We, you know we have been doing that. But the transnational thing, I think, is so important because of the kind of global and international world that we live in today. You know, these black people had to deal with the overlapping worlds of the United States, canada, great Britain and, of course, the African diaspora. I mean you get some of these people that were enslaved in the Caribbean wind up in New Orleans, come through Rochester, then go to St Catlin. You know what I mean. It's like whoa, which has happened right. So all these beings are at work, All of these identities right are at work right, and they've seen a lot of these. You know a lot of different places, right, and so that's very interesting. And so Black people have always, you know, been that way. I mean even the Haitian Revolution. You know Black people in the United States knew about that right, as this Black liberation movement, right, and they were talking about this in the American South, the American North and in Canada, right. And so these things are very important that we understand that our people are always these kind of these global, international people.

Speaker 2:

And then in both the Rochester community and the St Catharines community, particularly in the St Catharines community, black people always subsidize their food, if you will, with gardens in their backyards.

Speaker 2:

In St Catharines, I mean, that was normal. They didn't have enough money to pay for everything at the market or go to this store or that store, and so they subsidized food with their gardens in their backyards. They raised at the market or go, you know, go to this store or that store, and so they subsidize food with their gardens in their backyards they raise chickens. I mean, these people, they're making their way out of nowhere, they know what they have to do, and so, you know, in that colored village you would see a lot of that going on to subsidize their food. And so, and then some people taking to Grantham, this small community outside of St Catharines, where they would, you know, people that really wanted to kind of farm and kind of continue in their Southern ways did that out in Grantham, so you know what I mean. They are green as can be. They got a green thumb as well.

Speaker 1:

And you know what's interesting. I want to make sure I ask this the right way. I want to make sure I say this the right way. Our lack of freedom, the fact that we were enslaved then and not citizens of the United States, to me in some ways could be leveraged or thought of as a way to think of ourselves as global citizens. In order for Black people in the United States to really completely think about and conceptualize their freedom and their citizenry, we have to think globally. Oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I mean that's part of what I'm saying in the book is I'm trying to make sure that you know, Black people are open to other places that are more liberal or that are more accepting of them. Right, Like you know. I mean it's not bad to necessarily move to those spaces, right, and to create things to help, you know, bring other people out or help the people that you've left behind, right, there's no problem with that, and so I think that that is a very important part of talking about the future of Black liberation and how it looks. Right, because it looks, it looks internationally and it should look very transnational. And also it should be centered around the continent.

Speaker 2:

There'll be business in the continent that we try to uplift the continent, that we assist businesses that are operating in the continent as well. Right, because that's part of the african diaspora, that's the core, that's where we're all came from. Right, and so we should be trying to look to connect back to Africa and Black people and connecting with Black people globally, wherever they might be. I think that's very important to me and that's what I was trying to do with the book. I'm trying to get you know Rochester, out of the context of just the United States. Yes, of course it's in the United States, but you know it has this transnational identity that you know really helped the people that were in the Rochester community before 1861, right.

Speaker 1:

So I want to ask pictures matter. We talked about Harriet Tubman's picture and you've held up the book before. Can you hold up the book one more time? Yeah, sure, so that picture is gorgeous, and so, for the folks who will listen to this on a podcast, could you describe the picture and where did you get that from? Who are those two ladies right there?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's really interesting because we don't know who exactly these two ladies are, and so this picture actually comes from a series of pictures that were found in a St Catherine's attic around 2011. As I was finishing my dissertation, rick Bell, retired firefighter in St Catherine's, was told by somebody in his family to come up and empty an attic, and so he went up there and he found these pictures. These pictures are actually 10 types. Some of them were 10 types, so they were printed on 10. The thing is is that you know, there was a lot of different things that pictures were printed on, like glass 10. Kodak found out that it was best printed on film, right? So that's where, generally, what we're growing up, you know, we're printed on film, right? It was all this digital stuff, yeah, and so these are our 10 types that were found in an attic around 2011. And all of these pictures are held at the Brock University Archives in St Catharines, ontario, and so we don't know who these women are.

Speaker 2:

But I told LSU Press that I wanted to use this picture because, first of all, you don't see a lot of Black women pictured in these times, and also pictured with Niagara Falls right behind them, so I just thought that this was the image that had to go on the book, and so, luckily, lsu Press agreed and placed it there, and now I get to talk more about the Rick Bell collection and to popularize it so people can analyze the different pictures and the material culture and the things that they had on, because that's one way to glean information as well. You know, what do people possess, right, what do they own and what does that say about them? And so we don't know who these two women are. But you know, I think that they're probably related in some way, just by looking at them. But I think it's just phenomenal that I get to place them on this book, because in many ways they're a part of these borderland blacks that were operating in this international zone before the Civil War.

Speaker 1:

Great, so we can close the time. Typically, what I do for the last question, if there's nothing in particular that you want to add to wrap us up, is if you were going to write one more chapter of the book, what would it be and what would you talk about in that final chapter?

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's great, that's great. So there's a couple of things that I talk about in the end of the book, talking about the Niagara area as this kind of liberation zone, a zone where the Niagara movement was founded. The Niagara movement really becomes the NAACP, and so this is an area of change, right, they said that the Niagara movement. They basically said they wanted to make freedom fall like Niagara Falls, and so they named it the Niagara movement. Out of that movement, of course, comes the NAACP, and so this area has always been used as a zone for change.

Speaker 2:

You have to understand, too, that the people of the NAACP and the Niagara movement were really opposing Booker T Washington, and so this was the area that they came to.

Speaker 2:

They wanted to meet in Buffalo, but they wound up going across the border, and so that's what I kind of end with, and I will probably expand that even more. I didn't know that that would kind of be the way that I would kind of put a bow on the book, but as I started to write it, I'm like man, I can go on and on about this, but I had to leave it at some point. So I would probably continue with that narrative of Black people understanding that crossing borders is very important and that crossing borders and having movement is liberating in many ways. They did not want to deal with the segregation in Buffalo. Having movement is liberating in many ways. They did not want to deal with the segregation in Buffalo, so they went across a Niagara River where they could meet unopposed, if you will, by these Jim Crow laws that were really being enforced even in places like like Buffalo Right.

Speaker 1:

That's good. And one more time, tell us the name of your book, where we can get it If people want to follow you on Twitter or Instagram. If you're're open to that, share your mandals and we'll wrap up yeah, so I was just share my website.

Speaker 2:

It's dan j broyle, that's b-r-o-y-l-dcom. You can find articles, you can find you know where I'm book touring stuff like that. The name of the book is Borderland Blacks Two Cities in the Niagara Region During the Final Decade of Slavery. And so I'll also just promote one other thing, and that is the article that I wrote called the Underground Rural as Afrofuturism. I think it's probably one of the best pieces I've written and I think it's worth looking at if you have the time.

Speaker 1:

So all right, dan, thank you for joining us, thank you for your time and I'm just going to add y'all, check out Dan when he does his TED talk. We talked about this like an inside joke. Dan's supposed to do a TED talk called I'm not going to spoil it because I want somebody to take it so he knows what I'm talking about. Yeah, exactly, he know what I'm talking about, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, yeah, we gonna do that.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining this edition of Entrepreneurial Appetite. If you liked the episode, you can support the show by becoming one of our founding 55 patrons, which gives you access to our live discussions and bonus materials, or you can subscribe to the show. Give us five stars and leave a comment.