The Colored Hockey League
Banned Histories of Race in America
I like to write about things that pull the world into better focus. The history of race in this country does that. Once you discover the ways in which wealthy bigots implemented their world views, it’s easier to understand not only how the bigotry hurts non-white people but also how the wealth hurts the non-wealthy.
But every once in a while, you learn a bit of history that doesn’t focus so much as it blurs. It’s not necessarily earth-shattering and it doesn’t require you to take action. It can just be a simple uncovering, shifting you just enough to not forget. Today I thought I’d tell you about a bit of history that stuck with me in that way.
The National Hockey League (NHL) was founded 105 years ago in 1917. Hockey is known as the whitest sport, which is why it’s so unreal that in 1895 — 22 years before the NHL even existed — the Colored Hockey League (CHL) was founded. It began in Nova Scotia by a Black Pastor named James Borden, a couple of Black Lawyers named James Robinson Johnston and James A. R. Kinney as well as Pan-African organizer Henry Sylvester Williams.
The CHL wasn’t just a bunch of neighborhood pickup games, either. It was a deliberate Black institution with a dozen teams and over 400 Black players from all over Eastern Canada. And when I say it was deliberately Black, I mean it. For example, there was a team called the Sea Sides and their emblem was a double “S”. But not just any double “S”. It was the double “S” that was branded into the hands of abolitionists (called “Slave Stealers”) by US Marshals and other authorities attempting to enforce the institution of slavery.
The CHL was centralized in deliberate Black communities that, as you might imagine, don’t exist anymore. They were deliberately destroyed and erased by the Canadian government in the early 1900s, much in the way of Maine’s Malaga Island and other Black communities in the US. And with those communities went the CHL.
For more on the history of the CHL, check out this Canadaland podcast.