Lord Dalhousie called black refugees 'slaves by habitat and education'
As Dalhousie University enters its third century with a public commitment to inclusion and racial diversity, it's also digging into its own troubled past.
The university launched its bicentennial celebrations at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium in Halifax Tuesday with a performance of Mi'kmaq dancing and drumming and a video display celebrating the accomplishments of its black graduates. George Elliott Clarke, Canada's former parliamentary poet laureate and one of Dalhousie's most famous black alumni, performed a poem summarizing the university's history.
Dalhousie's president praised the university's founder for establishing a small college by the sea that is now a renowned seat of learning.
"That decision itself was bold and visionary, spending precious public dollars on books and a college," Richard Florizone told the crowd of about a thousand people.
What the university didn't want to talk about was the panel Florizone has tasked with researching what the school's founder — George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie — said and did on questions of race, racism and slavery.
In a letter now in the Nova Scotia Archives, Lord Dalhousie calls black refugees who fled the U.S. during and after the War of 1812 "slaves by habitat and education" and suggests they go back to their owners.
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