Mr. Emancipation is the story of Walter L Perry’s determination to put on a celebration that would transcend divisions of race and class. He staged an Emancipation Day festival that was where everyone wanted to be. Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr, Jesse Owens all headed there because, as civil rights activist Dick Gregory said “The largest Juneteenth celebration was not in America, it was in Windsor, Canada.”
A celebration of ending slavery sounds grim.
What Walter Perry organized was the exact opposite of grim. Imagine a miles-long parade. The smell of soul food. Whirling carnival rides. There was live music, talent shows and even the Miss Sepia beauty pageant (the first international beauty pageant for Black women).
From 1936 until 1967, that’s how Walter Perry celebrated freedom. Perry and his celebration got caught up in the overheated racial politics of the day, sabotage and race riots of 1967 in Detroit. His event never recovered that year and shortly after Walter Perry died…. but the spirit of Mister. Emanciaption still lives on.
Preston William Chase is a seventh generation African Canadian and a descendant of William Parker. Parker escaped slavery in Maryland, and went on to play a key role in the Christiana Riots in Pennsylvania. It was his friend, the great Fredrick Douglass who convinced Parker to take refuge in Canada.
Born to a single mother in the Black community of downtown Windsor, Ontario, Canada, Chase went on to become a high school teacher. He is also the family historian and a passionate advocate for greater awareness of a historic Black community, time has forgotten.
It was a desire for everyone to know the story of his great great uncle Walter Perry that led Chase to pick up a camera and begin recording the stories about him from the elders in his community.
Mister Emancipation: The Walter Perry story is the result of twenty years of research and five years of production.