Thread by @PeteOlusoga

Would you like to hear about an all-Black Ice Hockey League? An often forgotten, yet crucial piece of history that actually shaped the way the game is played today?

Oh you would? Wonderful.

Let's begin.
#BlackHistoryMonth

So I think we can all agree that Ice Hockey is pretty white, and I’m not talking about the ice. In today’s NHL, about 5% of the players are players of colour. As of last year, it was just 43 players out of over 700.

But it wasn’t always that way. Way back in 1793, not too long after the American colonies drop-kicked the British out of a country that didn’t belong to either of them, Canada passed an act to end slavery and grant any slave arriving there automatic freedom. Yay Canada!

At the same time though, the US passed the first Fugitive Slave Act which gave slaveowners the right to “recover” any slave who decided to fuck off the whole slavery lark and attempt escape.

So a bunch of former slaves now found themselves in Canada... presumably freezing their tits off.

I googled “Black person shivering” and this is what I have for you, so, we're all just going to have to deal with it, okay?

Anyway, more came later. Around 4000 slaves freed by the British (because they fought on the British side in 1812), and around 30-40,000 more via the Underground Railroad before the end of the Civil War in 1865, many of whom would have been led there by this boss-level badass.

☝️🏾Harriet Tubman there, with here trademarked “do not fuck with me under any circumstances” look.

Side note, Tubman lived Canada, in St Catharines, Ontario for 10 years from 1851.

Remember the Fugitive Slave Act of 1973 from a few tweets ago? Well the revised version, Fugitive Slave Act 2: Electric Boogaloo, was passed in 1850....

This compelled citizens to help with the capture escaped slaves, denied slaves the right to a jury trial, and increased the penalty for interfering with the return of slaves to their owners. So in fairness, Canada seemed like a pretty good idea.

Anyway, this all meant that by the mid-19th century, there were loads of Black people in Canada, promised freedom, but as is often the case, effectively segregated and given the really shitty parts of town to live in… away from white people.

Now Canada is and always has been all about Hockey, but Black people weren’t allowed to play … because, y’know, racism and stuff.

So what did they do? Well in 1895, they formed their own goddammed league, because screw you NHL.

Okay, the NHL didn’t actually exist at that time, but the Stanley Cup did, and you totally get the point I was making so pipe down, hockey nerds.

Led by a dude names James A.R. Kinney the league started in Nova Scotia as a way of getting young, Black men to attend church. Pretty soon there was a three-team league which had expanded to five teams by 1900.

People came to watch too, and players started making a bit of money. At its height, the league had over 400 players from Nova Scotia, New Bruinswick and Prince Edward Island. And the team names were some next level trolling:

Of course, people were still racist as shit. Black players were only allowed on the ice when the white league season was over, so the CHL (which I’d love to tell you stood for Canadian Hockey League, but it did not), had a pretty short season, before the ice became unusable.

The ‘Coloured Hockey League’ had run its course by the mid 1920s, but the legacy of the players is real and can be found in the NHL to this day, because the Black players didn’t give a shit about the white league rules and invented all sorts of brand new, impressive, funky shit.

Henry “Braces” Franklyn of the Dartmouth Jubilees was apparently the first person to use the “butterfly” goaltending technique, dropping to his knees to block a shot (so no Wikipedia, not Glenn Hall after all).

Students: Wikipedia is not acceptable in a reference list.

This technique wasn’t allowed in the white leagues, but the NHL later culturally apporpr… I mean 'adopted' the rule, and the technique that we see most Goalie’s use today.

Oh and the slap-shot too.

Three guesses where that came from?

So there you have it. Former slaves, right in the face of racism, segregation, and the freezing fucking cold, doing their thing, making their own league, innovating, shaping Hockey into what it is now.

Giants, the lot of them.
#BlackHistoryMonth