Analysis of Mifflin Wistar Gibbs Shadow and Light: An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century
Mifflin Wistar Gibbs lived from 1823 to 1915, and published Shadow and Light: An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century in 1902. One of the things he recounts in this novel is the story of his sojourn on Vancouver Island and on Queen Charlotte Island, both in British Columbia. Like many black people in the mid-19th century, Gibbs left the USA in disgust after being denied basic human and political rights and came to Canada, where blacks had been promised fair treatment by the Governor, Sir James Douglas, himself half black, although passing for white all his life.