CNHS - Mifflin Wistar Gibbs - Canadian National Historic Sites on Waymarking.com

Parks Canada Backgrounder

Born into a free Black family in Philadelphia, Gibbs joined Frederick Douglass and others in the campaign to abolish slavery in the United States. An apprenticed carpenter, he was also an ambitious businessman. In 1850, Gibbs moved to San Francisco and became one of the city’s most prosperous Black merchants. As social and political restrictions on Black settlers increased in California, he became a leading spokesman for his community, taking a prominent role in civil rights protests. He also helped to found and publish the first Black newspaper in California. Despite his accomplishments, or perhaps because of them, Gibbs soon found himself on the move once more.

Amid an increasingly hostile racial climate, Gibbs helped lead an exodus of approximately 800 Black residents from California who were seeking the protection of British law in Victoria. After arriving in 1858, he returned briefly to California in 1859 to marry Maria Ann Alexander of Kentucky, with whom he would have five children. The couple returned to Vancouver Island where, within a few short years, Gibbs would play an important role in several aspects of the history of the local Black community.

As a politician, businessman, and defender of human rights, Gibbs was the recognized leader of the Black community in Vancouver Island during its early years between 1858 and 1870, and is still a revered historical figure in the Black community of British Columbia.

Through his political abilities, Gibbs made Black residents a force in colonial politics and, when elected to Victoria City Council, became the first Black person to hold public office in British Columbia, revealing a clear vision for the future of the colony within Confederation that was rare in the hurly-burly politics of the day.

He became one of the leading merchants of early Victoria and placed himself on the cutting edge of entrepreneurial activity in British Columbia by investing in resource development and encouraging trade links outside of the area at an early date.

In person and in the press, he acted as a spokesperson for the West Coast’s African Canadian community, encouraging their integration into Vancouver Island society and intervening repeatedly when efforts were made to segregate them in the churches and theaters of Victoria.

In 1870, Gibbs returned to the United States and enjoyed an equally significant political and business career in the American South before his death in 1915.

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