The late Dr. Wilson Head was the son of a Georgia sharecropper and not one to walk away from a fight for civil rights and justice for the downtrodden.
Head brought with him a lifetime of civil rights activism, which he shared with many in Toronto’s Black community when he moved here in 1959.
He is credited for being among “the first to put racism on the agenda of the Canadian conscience,” and even helped to end segregation at a golf course in Windsor.
His activism started in the 1930s in a series of “sit-in” protests against U.S. restaurants and bars, barbers, shopkeepers and movie house owners who would not serve Blacks. These protests took place a decade before the civil rights movement began.
Head was born in Milner, Georgia, in 1914. He passed away in 1993 at the age of 79.
His father died when he was 11, but his mother stressed the importance of education, telling him he would have to be “twice as smart as whites to compete,” words that he never forgot.
He once complained that he was fired from a job for glancing at a newspaper. His boss didn’t think Blacks should know how to read.
Head took two years to save enough tuition to graduate from Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute with a Bachelor of Science in Education. He was named in a 1939 Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges.
He was shaped by his work with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He became a director at Flanner House in Indianapolis, which served needy Black people.
Head said he decided to move to Windsor “to get my children away from a racist society.” Here he found a job as the Executive Director of the Windsor Group Therapy Project. In 1965 he became the Director of Research and Planning for the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto.
He also lectured in social work at the University of Windsor, University of Michigan, Wayne State University and Sir Williams College, in Chicago.
The academic is best known for being one of the co-founders in 1975 of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations (UARR), which stood up for the rights of Blacks and racial minorities then, as it still does today. That was during a time of much more racial unrests involving police and Blacks in Toronto.
I remember Head as a tall, quiet, articulate man who would often visit the office of Contrast Newspaper, on Bathurst St., where I worked, to pick up a paper or seek coverage for an upcoming event.
He was busy with a list of organizations including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association of Toronto as Vice-President in 1967, the National Welfare Council as a founding member and the National Black Coalition of Canada as Chairman and President from 1977 to 1982.
As Coalition head in 1981 he testified before the Joint U.S. House Senate Committee on the “Canadian Constitution.” He was also on the executive of The Metro Committee on Race Relations and Policing.
Even back then Head was an “outspoken critic of Metro Police,” citing racial profiling in their practices. The fight against racial profiling still continues today more than 40 years later.
“He opposed segregation of the races all his life,” according to reports. “He denounced the idea of all-Black schools and social services, asserting, ‘segregation is inherently inferior'”.
Head was assaulted in 1980 while climbing the steps to the offices of UARR, on College St., at Spadina Ave. He was attacked from behind with several blows to the head, resulting in a fall down the stairs. No one was ever arrested for that offence.
Unfazed, in 1988 he took part in the Donald Marshall Inquiry Commission in Nova Scotia. This investigation led to his ground-breaking paper entitled “Discrimination Against Blacks in Nova Scotia: The Criminal Justice System.”
The well-respected sociologist and community planner leaves behind a rich legacy in Toronto for his work in race relations, human rights, city and community building.
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