“I greatly admire Mifflin Gibbs” – Ron Nicholson

Ron Nicholson, long-term member including serving on the Board of the BC Black History Awareness Society, in interview format.

Location: Ron is seated in the Mifflin Wistar Gibbs Community Room located in the  sxʷeŋ’xʷəŋ taŋ’exw  James Bay Library Branch, Victoria B.C.  On the wall behind Ron is a partial image of the plaque for the dedication of this room which took place in May 2018.

On-screen text: “I greatly admire Mifflin Gibbs” Ron Nicholson

Ron: Mifflin Wistar Gibbs was quite an individual and personally I admired him tremendously. He was one of my personal heroes.  If you consider the fact that at that time period, in the mid 1800s, the Civil War was still going on in the United States. Slavery was still legal at that time in the United States. There were slave states and there were free states.

He made the move to California which was a free state. He published a newspaper there. Prior to even going there he was an abolitionist when it came to slavery. He knew Frederick Douglass and travelled with Frederick Douglass when he lectured about the abolition of slavery.

He led the community and made the move to Victoria and became very involved in the community here. When you consider how difficult it was for blacks in general at that time, his personal accomplishments would be something that anybody, black white or anyone could be proud of, should look up to.

He is recognized for his enormous contribution in a very difficult time period. So being black myself I can appreciate how difficult it must have been for Mifflin and other blacks at that time.  It just pulls on my heart strings to read and learn about Mifflin and his accomplishments; which were continued on well beyond his 10 or 12 years in Victoria.

He went back to the States and became a lawyer after attending Oberlin College. He became a judge in the state of Arkansas following the civil war. Then he was appointed to be the Consul to Madagascar which was unheard of for blacks at that time to be that involved and representing the United States as a country.

He did so much! Anybody would consider this an accomplished life for anyone, black or white.  These are the main reasons I consider him to be, of all the pioneers, one that we can be proud of. He paved the way for other blacks to come, he helped BC to stay in Canada through his contribution at the Yale convention where they negotiated the terms of BC actually becoming part of Canada. It prevented the annexation of BC or Vancouver Island to the United States – which was a very real possibility.