Civil rights and union activist Bromley Armstrong has been in the trenches fighting to improve the lives of Black people in Ontario long before it became trendy or cool.
Armstrong, who is now 92, arrived in Toronto from Jamaica in 1947 and dedicated most of his life to the civil rights movement and helping others as a trade unionist.
He started off as a shop steward for Local 439 of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) and became a leader in the Canadian trade union movement. He was also a member of the Toronto & York Region Labour Council, who will be presenting the Bromley L. Armstrong Award for the 14th year on May 18.
Described as a “blood and guts” ally of the working poor, Armstrong will best be remembered for taking part in the Dresden sit-ins held in the early 1950s to highlight some Ontario restaurants that refused to serve Blacks.
Since 1948, a group called the National Unity Association (NUA) of Chatham, Dresden and North Buxton had been fighting city officials unsuccessfully to stand up for social justice and end discrimination for Blacks.
Some of the businesses in Dresden were not complying with the April 1954 Fair Accommodation Practices Act, which made it illegal in Ontario to refuse service to Blacks at any establishment.
Dresden was important because it is the home of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and a terminus of the Underground Railroad, which brought hundreds of fugitive slaves from the U.S. to freedom in Canada. Blacks made up nearly 20% of Dresden’s residents by the 1950s, yet a number of restaurants and barbershops refused to serve them.
Realizing it was time for a change, Armstrong and other activists from the Toronto-based Joint Labour Committee for Human Rights conducted sit-ins at the racist restaurants, testing the owners’ non-compliance with the law.
The owners were taken to court and the law upheld in a legal case, which was Canada’s first successful test of laws making discrimination illegal.
Armstrong, some recalled, in one encounter calmly demanded service of a bigoted restaurant owner, who was angrily wielding a meat cleaver in his kitchen.
The Dresden sit-ins received prominent coverage in Toronto newspapers and propelled the civil rights movement to success. The incident convinced then Ontario Premier Leslie Frost to publicly affirm the province’s commitment to anti-discrimination laws and contributed to the creation of the Ontario Human Rights Commission in 1961.
Armstrong in the 1950s and 60s took on the Toronto “rent-ins,” in which Black or mixed-race couples were refused apartments for rent by bigoted owners claiming the unit was already rented. Instead it was offered to a white couple who appeared later and were part of the tests.
Similar legal cases were successfully built by the activists against the “rent-ins,” and later “private clubs,” to help bring them to attention of the legal system.
He also in 1954 led a delegation to Ottawa to protest the federal government’s restrictive immigration policy that shut out Blacks and other visible minorities.
Armstrong kept busy publishing The Islander, a weekly newspaper in the 1970s. He also served as a commissioner on the Ontario Human Rights Commission, adjudicator with the Ontario Labour Relations Board, convinced then North York Mayor Mel Lastman to set up the first municipal race relations committee and sat on the Board of Governors of the Canadian Centre for Police Relations.
For his services, he was presented the Order of Distinction in Jamaica, Order of Ontario in 1992 and the Order of Canada two years later.
He also received an honourary Doctor of Laws degree from York University in 2013 for his lifelong battle against racism.
Armstrong along the way helped to establish a list of community organizations; including the Caribbean Soccer Club, the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the Jamaican Canadian Association, the Jamaican Canadian Credit Union, the Urban Alliance on Race Relations, the National Black Coalition of Canada and the National Council of Jamaican and Supportive Organizations in Canada.
His autobiography Bromley: Tireless Champion for Just Causes was published in 2000.
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