A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.
After Constable Robert McBeath, VC, was shot and killed one foggy night on Granville at Davie, Vancouver’s black community mobilized to ensure that the accused, Fred Deal, was tried for the crime, not the colour of his skin. Through the Fountain Chapel, a black church located in Hogan’s Alley, the community set up a legal defence fund for Deal and arranged to have a section of the courtroom reserved “for the benefit of the colored people of the city” throughout the trial. Deal was nevertheless convicted of murder and sentenced to the gallows.
Fred Deal’s lawyer appealed the decision and on 15 March 1923, the sentence was reduced to life in prison for manslaughter following a record 10 1/2 hour jury deliberation. Reasonable doubt was cast on the prosecution’s case because Deal had been beaten several times while in custody and police witnesses had lied on the stand. Evidence also suggested that Constable McBeath may have targeted Deal and the white woman he was with for harassment and possibly violence the night of the shooting. A further complication was that the death-dealing bullet came from a police service revolver.
Newspapers initially presented McBeath's death as a cut-and-dried case of a white war hero gunned downed in cold blood by a “crazed negro” of the underworld. The activism of the black community was likely the determining factor in achieving what contemporary accounts agree was a fair trial and ultimately justice instead something amounting to a racist lynching.
For the full story, see “Black and Blue, Life and Death” at Past Tense Vancouver.
Sources: Top photo: Fred Deal, 1923 mugshot from the Vancouver Police Museum #P00033; bottom photo: Fountain Chapel taken by Lani Russwurm
