By Erica Phillips

Henry Walton Bibb was a community leader, newspaper publisher and activist in the Windsor, Ont. area. He published Canada’s first black newspaper, The Voice of the Fugitive from 1851 to 1853, which published among other things, stories of escaped slaves. The bi-weekly newspaper helped to promote abolition, temperance, education and agriculture, plus information for the Underground Railroad.

Bibb lived the horrors of slavery in Kentucky; he was sold six times, treated inhumanely and saw his mother and siblings sold. It’s reported that his father was state senator James Bibb.

Henry initially fled to Cincinnati, but was recaptured in 1837 when he returned for his wife. In 1840 he fled for Detroit, then Windsor in 1850. Eventually some of his siblings and his mother joined him in Canada.

Henry taught himself to read and write and worked with Frederick Douglass when he joined an anti-slavery society. Henry and his second wife, Mary Elizabeth Miles, and Josiah Henson helped found the Refugee Home Society in 1851 near Windsor, purchasing 2,000 acres of land. The society was controversial. Henry chaired the North American Convention of Colored People, founded a church and a school and delivered many anti-slavery lectures.

The Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, his autobiography was published in 1849.

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