Amber Valley, Alberta

In 1909, a group of 160 African-American homesteaders established the community.[2] The homesteaders, African Americans from Oklahoma and Texas, were attracted by the government's promises of land to homestead, as it was trying to encourage immigrant settlers to develop the land.[3] They were leaving Jim Crow conditions in the United States that discriminated against their rights.

Parson Harrison Sneed, a clergyman and mason,[4] led a group of settlers from Oklahoma to an area by the Athabasca River. For the first few years they had difficulties, as the climate was harsher than what they were used to in Oklahoma. They had both to clear and cultivate land for crops, and build their houses from the ground up. Most of the early ones were log cabins. The settlers were resilient and three quarters of the African Americans stayed on their land in Alberta long enough and developed it in order to secure their homestead patents, a higher percentage than of some other settlers groups. They built a school house in 1913 and a nondenominational church in 1914. They developed a baseball team that was widely known in the north.

Amber Valley was the largest community of Black people in Alberta until the 1930s. It received a post office in 1931, when it officially established the name of the community. At that time the community had about 300 people, and supported a two-room schoolhouse.[5] Because of a decline in population as people moved to cities and areas with more economic opportunity, the post office was closed in 1968.[6]

Other primarily American Black settlements formed at this time were Junkins (now Wildwood), near Chip Lake; Keystone (now Breton), southwest of Edmonton; Campsie, near Barrhead; and Eldon, near Maidstone, Saskatchewan.[5] From 1908 to 1911, about 1,000 African Americans settled in Alberta to homestead.[6]

Beginning in the 1950s, many descendants of the original settlers began moving to near cities such as Edmonton to escape the rigors of rural life and have more economic opportunity. In Edmonton, Amber Valley descendants founded the Shiloh Baptist Church, one of the few Black churches in Western Canada.[7]

Amber Valley is now considered a ghost town.[8]

Willis Reese Bowen (also known as Willace Bowen) organized the original group of five families who moved from Oklahoma to Vancouver, and then to Amber Valley.[5] Willace Bowen established a homestead that his son Obadiah Bowen continued to work. Obadiah replaced the first house with a brick one in 1938. The house and homestead, with outbuildings, has been preserved as Obadiah Place and honored for its historic provincial significance.

• John King and Stella King, parents of Violet King Henry, the first Canadian Black female attorney
• Willace Bowen,[9] also recorded as Willis Reese Bowen[10]
• Parson Harrison Sneed[9]
• Hazel Proctor[9]
• J.D. Edwards[11]

• Oliver Bowen, grandson of Willace Bowen and engineer[9]
• Cheryl Foggo[9]
• Violet King Henry, descendant of settlers and the first Canadian Black female attorney
• Floyd Sneed (drummer for the 1960s -'70s pop music band Three Dog Night), descendant born in Calgary, related to Harrison Sneed[9]

• The community was the subject of the 1984 documentary film We Remember Amber Valley, directed by Selwyn Jacob.[12]
• Esi Edugyan's debut novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne (2004), is set in the fictional town of Aster, based on this historic settlement. It features a Ghanaian-Canadian civil servant from Calgary who moves his family there in 1968 after inheriting property.[13]

Similar Alberta homesteader settlements of Black Canadians, founded in years 1908 to 1910:

• Campsie, Alberta
• Junkins (now Wildwood), Alberta
• Keystone (now Breton), Alberta

• Mathieu, Sarah-Jane. North of the Colour Line: Migration and Black Resistance in Canada, 1870-1955. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

• "Alberta's Black Pioneer Heritage", Alberta Online Encyclopedia
• Allan Rowe, "African American Immigration to Alberta", RETROactive blog, Historic Resources Management Branch, Alberta