NOTL Museum celebrates Black History Month

“Keep telling the story,” said a visitor to the Niagara-on-the-Lake Museum after viewing the 2023 exhibit, Bound and Determined: Chloe Cooley, Enslavement, and the Fight for Freedom.

“The time has come to understand the whole truth. People should not be threatened by past history but use it to determine current history.”  

And when actor, writer and educator Marcel Stewart said, “When I think of Black history in Niagara, I think of textbook pages that have been glued together,” the museum’s curator and managing director Sarah Kaufman knew that the NOTL Museum was uniquely placed to tell those stories. And to keep telling them, which is the goal of the museum’s current expansion plans.

“It was the voices of people like Chloe Cooley and Solomon Moseby, right here in Niagara, that brought to light the injustices and inequities of a system here in Upper Canada that was discriminatory and racist,” said Kaufman. In each case, their actions changed the course of history. 

The passionate cries of resistance by the enslaved Chloe Cooley initiated the first anti-

slavery legislation in the British Empire, right here in Upper Canada in 1793. And Canadian extradition and refugee policies being used today were first introduced in 1838 to secure the release from a Niagara courthouse of the enslaved Solomon Moseby, following a public riot led by local residents fighting for Moseby. 

The NOTL Museum has been sharing these rarely-told stories through exhibitions, lectures and interpretative experiences, such as the Voices of Freedom Park in Niagara-on-the-Lake’s heritage district with its annual July 9 Chloe Cooley Day commemorating the 1793 Act to Limit Slavery. In this way the museum is helping to preserve and promote the diversity of local history, ensuring that educators, residents and tourists alike all benefit from the knowledge.

The museum works closely with scholars, experts and representatives of the Black community, such as the Ontario Black History Society;  Rochelle Bush, a freedom seeker descendant and Trustee/Historian of the Salem Chapel BME Church, Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historic Site in St. Catharines; and Natasha Henry-Dixon, author, lecturer and PhD candidate in the Department of History at York University. Together they offer guidance and invaluable research for museum initiatives, helping to tell the stories, “and open those textbook pages,” said Kaufman. 

Recently at the museum, a mixed medium original art piece from Wayne Moore recreated the Chloe Cooley story; a musicology lecture from Carlos Morgan told the history of Black music in Canada; and regular museum Black History walking tours offered an in-depth look at early Black settlers who made significant contributions to Niagara, from teaching and farming, to business and local politics.

Currently, the museum is kicking off Black History month with the Museum Doc Club series presenting the award-winning documentary, Becoming, which follows Michelle Obama on her 30-city book tour across the U.S.

That will be followed with an upcoming virtual lecture on Feb. 7 at 11 a.m. with Julian Sher, author of The North Star: Canada and the Civil War Plots Against Lincoln, which tells the story of Canadians and Confederate agents working together here in Canada, and the role they played in supporting the enslaved South.

And on Feb. 21, at 11 a.m., the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Center will present The Borderland: Black Agency and Resistance Between Two Nations, a virtual lecture on the fiercely passionate Black resistance movement on Niagara’s border with Upper New York.

All those interested are invited to check the museum webpage for more information on all current and

past Black History programming, including past lecture recordings, short documentaries, and research opportunities into early Black settlements. 

Said Kaufman, “Another visitor said to me, thank you for telling these stories of humanity, struggle, transition and freedom. And that’s exactly what the NOTL Museum intends to keep doing, and not just for one month, but throughout the year.”

For more information visit notlmuseum.ca or phone 905-468-3912.