A little known piece of Saskatchewan’s history is being recognized this weekend to honour 20 black families who uprooted from Oklahoma to escape segregation and own their own land. Crystal Mayes is on the Board of Directors for the Saskatchewan African Canadian Heritage Museum and is a descendant of one of those pioneers and notes there would have been significant culture shock coming in 1910 from a southern state to Saskatchewan. She says black communities always had a church and the Shiloh Church was the first building built in Shiloh. The first black community in Saskatchewan will be recognized at an official unveiling of the plaque commemorating the Shiloh Baptist Church and Cemetery as a provincial heritage property. It gets underway at 2 p.m. on Saturday. The Shiloh Baptist Church is just north of Maidstone.
























