A letter to the Editor: J.W. Montgomery and the Kent County Civil Rights League of Chatham-Kent

Blacks in the Canadian provinces made 1 August a day of celebration to commemorate the Emancipation Act of 1833 that abolished slavery throughtout most of the British Empire. By the early 1840s, it had become an annual event in most black settlements and in towns and cities with a sizable black population. Traditional Emancipation Day activities included parades, church services, dances, musical entertainment, banquets, teas, and speeches praising Britian for ending slavery and criticizing the United States for continuing the instituation.

The 1842 celebration in Chatham began at dawn, when twenty-one rounds were fired from cannon at the militia parade grounds, and ran through the day. The evening's entertainment included a meal with "about sixty covers" and "many speeches." Josiah Jones, a local black farmer and militia member born in Tennessee in 1816, gave a well-published address. The celebration ended with a dance at the officer's building on the grounds.

Source:
The Black Abolitionist Papers: Volume II, University of North Caronina Press Chapel Hill and London, 1986, pp. 95