[LINK] "The 1st black graduate of Queen's saved his alma mater. Will his story be told?"
This article by Elizabeth Church in The Globe and Mail caught my attention, what with its connection to my alma mater.
In a hillside plot at Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery a faded pink headstone marks the grave of Robert Sutherland, who in 1852 became the first black man to graduate from a university in what was then British North America.
"May his devotion towards his alma mater not pass into oblivion," says the Latin inscription on the tall column placed there by Queen's University, the sole beneficiary of Mr. Sutherland's sizable estate when he died in 1878.
More than a century later, a small group of Queen's students are waging a quiet campaign to fulfill that request by having a major building named for him on the Kingston campus. Their efforts hit a roadblock in December after members of the university's board failed to endorse their proposal at a closed-door meeting.
The decision came after one trustee pointed out that a former Queen's principal, David Smith, also does not have a building on campus to honour him, say several individuals who attended the meeting. Others warned that a prime fundraising opportunity might be lost by calling one of the few unnamed buildings on campus after the long-dead benefactor. The issue was referred to Queen's principal Tom Williams for further study.
"It's a no-brainer that this man needs an adequate recognition of his contribution to the university," said Leora Jackson, an undergraduate who also represents students in her position as the school's rector. Last March, Ms. Jackson and three other student leaders decided they would take on the Sutherland project to raise the profile of the remarkable Queen's graduate.
[. . .]
[G]iven Mr. Sutherland's achievements, little is known about him. Born in Jamaica in the 1830s, he had a Scottish father and a Jamaican mother, but it is not clear how he ended up in a prep school in Kingston, Ont., in the 1840s and later at Queen's. Mr. Welsh, a PhD student in history, said he is working with contacts in Jamaica to try to uncover why Mr. Sutherland chose the city and how he paid for his education. What is clear, he said, is that the young man was an exceptional scholar. Mr. Sutherland received several awards in mathematics and Latin while at the university and after graduation became the first black man to study law in British North America, at Osgoode Hall in Toronto.
Details of his working life also are sketchy. It is known that as a lawyer he worked in Berlin, Ont., now Kitchener, a popular settlement for American slaves escaping to Canada through the Underground Railway. One of his specialties was land titles, Mr. Welsh said, and it is believed he worked with former slaves to secure their ownership of unsettled land in the area. He later practised law in Walkerton, Ont.
Mr. Sutherland had no family and when he became ill, Queen's principal George Monro Grant is believed to have paid a visit to him at his sick bed in Toronto. Mr. Grant requested that he help his former school, which was struggling after losing money in a bank collapse. Upon his death, the successful lawyer left all he had to the school: about $13,000, roughly equal to the university's annual budget.
All of that money was used to save the school from a possible union with the University of Toronto, Mr. Welsh said, except for the funds used to cover legal fees and to pay for Mr. Sutherland's grave marker.
For whatever it's worth, I found contemporary Kingston to be much more diverse, ethnically and racially and otherwise, than Charlottetown. Granted that isn't saying much, I do think that Kingston's about as diverse a community as you're going to get in Ontario outside of greater Toronto and Ottawa. I think. Thoughts?
In a hillside plot at Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery a faded pink headstone marks the grave of Robert Sutherland, who in 1852 became the first black man to graduate from a university in what was then British North America.
"May his devotion towards his alma mater not pass into oblivion," says the Latin inscription on the tall column placed there by Queen's University, the sole beneficiary of Mr. Sutherland's sizable estate when he died in 1878.
More than a century later, a small group of Queen's students are waging a quiet campaign to fulfill that request by having a major building named for him on the Kingston campus. Their efforts hit a roadblock in December after members of the university's board failed to endorse their proposal at a closed-door meeting.
The decision came after one trustee pointed out that a former Queen's principal, David Smith, also does not have a building on campus to honour him, say several individuals who attended the meeting. Others warned that a prime fundraising opportunity might be lost by calling one of the few unnamed buildings on campus after the long-dead benefactor. The issue was referred to Queen's principal Tom Williams for further study.
"It's a no-brainer that this man needs an adequate recognition of his contribution to the university," said Leora Jackson, an undergraduate who also represents students in her position as the school's rector. Last March, Ms. Jackson and three other student leaders decided they would take on the Sutherland project to raise the profile of the remarkable Queen's graduate.
[. . .]
[G]iven Mr. Sutherland's achievements, little is known about him. Born in Jamaica in the 1830s, he had a Scottish father and a Jamaican mother, but it is not clear how he ended up in a prep school in Kingston, Ont., in the 1840s and later at Queen's. Mr. Welsh, a PhD student in history, said he is working with contacts in Jamaica to try to uncover why Mr. Sutherland chose the city and how he paid for his education. What is clear, he said, is that the young man was an exceptional scholar. Mr. Sutherland received several awards in mathematics and Latin while at the university and after graduation became the first black man to study law in British North America, at Osgoode Hall in Toronto.
Details of his working life also are sketchy. It is known that as a lawyer he worked in Berlin, Ont., now Kitchener, a popular settlement for American slaves escaping to Canada through the Underground Railway. One of his specialties was land titles, Mr. Welsh said, and it is believed he worked with former slaves to secure their ownership of unsettled land in the area. He later practised law in Walkerton, Ont.
Mr. Sutherland had no family and when he became ill, Queen's principal George Monro Grant is believed to have paid a visit to him at his sick bed in Toronto. Mr. Grant requested that he help his former school, which was struggling after losing money in a bank collapse. Upon his death, the successful lawyer left all he had to the school: about $13,000, roughly equal to the university's annual budget.
All of that money was used to save the school from a possible union with the University of Toronto, Mr. Welsh said, except for the funds used to cover legal fees and to pay for Mr. Sutherland's grave marker.
For whatever it's worth, I found contemporary Kingston to be much more diverse, ethnically and racially and otherwise, than Charlottetown. Granted that isn't saying much, I do think that Kingston's about as diverse a community as you're going to get in Ontario outside of greater Toronto and Ottawa. I think. Thoughts?