The Codes Of The Colored Hockey League Of The Maritimes

 By George & Darril Fosty,

SONAHHR: NEW YORK: The Colored Hockey League was one of the most complex sports organizations ever created. It was a League led by Baptist Ministers and Church Laymen. Natural leaders and proponents of Black Pride, these men represented a concept in sports never before seen. Their Rule Book was The Bible. Their Game Book, the words, oral history, and lessons derived from the experiences of the Black struggle and the Underground Railroad. Their strategy, the principles, and teachings of the American Black leader Booker T. Washington the founder of the Tuskegee Institute and a believer in the concept of racial equality through racial separation.

 

The Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes was a league built on religious beliefs that were the cornerstone of the Baptist religion. A league comprised of determined Black athletes and organizers who would be the personification of athletic and spiritual excellence. The Baptist Articles of Faith, a 17-point declaration, was for many their unofficial Oath of Allegiance. An allegiance understood and upheld by all who wore the team uniforms. An allegiance rooted in faith and hope and one that spoke of a bright tomorrow and the promise of a new world to come. 

 

Seventeen points designed to guide the human soul and to serve as a foundation of belief. A declaration of faith and covenant that declares among other points that there is “but one living and true God.” Because of the popularity of hockey in Canada, versus baseball, it would be winter’s golden game that would become the beacon of the Nova Scotia Black sports movement. Hockey would in turn become a game with ties to religion, social mobility, politics, and the emergence of Black Nationalism. For it would be hockey, not baseball, that would be the initial driving force for the ultimate liberation and equality of Black Canadians. 

 

The first Black Nova Scotian hockey games played within an organized league would occur in the spring of 1895. With the help of a young Black Baptist leadership, two hockey teams, the Halifax Eurekas and the Halifax Stanley, were drawn from players of the Black tenements on Gottingen Street. These teams, the first “organized” Black clubs of their kind in Halifax, would eventually become part of an emerging Black presence in hockey throughout the region, becoming true hallmarks of Black Pride. Subsequently, following the creation of these two club teams, Black community leaders in Halifax and Dartmouth would work to form and promote their own segregated hockey league. Black respect for the past, and a burning memory of the struggle that was the language and experience of the Black race on North American shores. The Code of the Underground Railroad would become the language of the Colored Hockey League. 

 

 

Branded "Double SS" for "Slave Stealer" was used in the naming of the Africville Sea-Seasides.

 

For decades it had been the practice of Black ministers and leaders to codify their language. To speak of something that, on the outside, appeared to mean one thing but to those who understood the language of the Black struggle, would have a different understanding. This practice had become an art during the years of the Underground Railroad. The Code of the Underground Railroad was found in the songs of the plantation slave. 

 

In order to ensure the success of runaways fleeing northward to Canada, Blacks communicated by way of coded messages often put to verse. These songs were sung during religious services or in the field, with each song having a specific meaning or message to those for whom it was intended. It was as Longfellow once said, “For the soul is dead that slumbers, and things are not what they seem.”

 

To the White community of Nova Scotia, the Dartmouth “Jubilees” hockey team was named in honor of Queen Victoria and her Diamond Jubilee celebrations. To the Blacks, Jubilee referred to “the year of Emancipation” a “time of future happiness” when all Blacks would be free. Other team names would hold religious meaning: Eureka, a term associated with the discovery of gold was later thought to be in reference to the Klondike Goldrush. In fact, “Eureka” meant, “I have found” a reference to those who had found God. Later, Hammond Plains, a community with the largest contingent of people who could trace their origins to the Underground Railroad, would name their team the “Moss Backs”. Associated with the Underground Railroad, the “Moss Backs” referred to the side of a dead tree on which moss grows. At night, guided only by the stars, Black slaves fleeing north to Canada often traveled by touch through dense woodlands. In the pitch darkness the practice of placing one’s hand in front of the body, feeling the sides of trees, and determining where the moss grew, allowed those fleeing to remain on course; for, as all slaves knew well, moss grows on the north side of a tree. And as anyone who has walked through the woods at night also knows, the ability to see at night without light is nearly impossible, forcing the person to walk constantly with their hands extended, feeling the air in front of them. 

 

It is in the naming of the Halifax “Stanley” hockey team that this impact is most visible. In 1890, newspapers had reported on a movement within the upper echelons of British society to promote the idea of educated Black men returning to Western Africa in an attempt to “uplift” the primitive masses and to ensure British Empire control over the region. Arguing that environmental factors made it more feasible for Blacks, rather than Whites, to follow in the footsteps of Lord Stanley - the great explorer who had ventured deep into the Congo - these elitists believed that an army of “Black Stanleys” could stabilize the region and achieve the greatest benefits for the British cause. 

 

By naming the team “the Stanley” the league leaders had spoken volumes, making both a political, as well as a mocking statement of the current political theories. This bold “in your face” did not sit well within the halls of White Haligonian society. 

 

Though the Colored Hockey League appeared on the outside to be simply an avenue of recreation for young Black men, in fact, it was something much more. Never before had Canadian hockey witnessed such a phenomenon. Never before had a hockey league been organized using religious leadership as the guiding organizational force. Never before, or since, has the message been so clear. The league’s rulebook would be The Bible. Their Game Book, the words, oral history, and lessons derived from the Black Canadian experience and the legacy of the Underground Railroad. Their strategy was to uplift the Black man to a level that would make him equal to their White brethren, all the while installing a sense of leadership, organization, community, purpose, determination, teamwork, and duty into the hearts and minds of young Black men.

 

Excerpt from George & Darril Fosty’s 

Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895-1925