GRIOTS REPUBLIC - AN URBAN BLACK TRAVEL MAG - AUGUST 2016

As our society
is further inundated with
cell phone videos showing white
folks going on racist diatribes, and Black
bodies being ravaged by guardians of
the carceral state, it has become far
too easy for many people to abridge
the totality of racism down to unkind
words and physical brutality. This is
problematic because it ignores and
under-appreciates the insidious scourge
of systemic racism. Those who constrict
racism to “nigger” and iPhone videos
of death will often miss the nuanced
dehumanization of voter suppression,
mass incarceration, employment bias
and housing discrimination, especially
the type that robs Black folks of their
homes, their land and their wealth.
While the United States has many
communities such as Oakland and
Baltimore where these detrimental
practices destroyed our community’s
wealth, very few people realize that this
form of systemic injustice isn’t just
American tradition, it’s also Canadian
history, and it occurred, not too long
ago, in a place once called Africville.
Just because
our persecution
isn’t televised,
doesn’t mean it
doesn’t exist.
To understand the importance of the
Africville community, located in Halifax,
Nova Scotia, one must understand its
historical significance.
Every July 4th, Americans gather
together to celebrate Independence
Day, an ode to the adoption of the
Declaration of Independence that
solidified The United States removal
from British colonial rule. One aspect of
the story that is rarely discussed is how
escaped Black slaves fought as soldiers
for the British under the “freedom and
a farm” promise, declaring that they
would get to be free and have their own
land if the British beat back the rebel
forces. The British then entered the
names of these Black Loyalists into a
large registry - the book of negroes -
which would allow these men, women
and children to obtain certificates of
freedom. Once the war was over, the
enslaved Blacks were taken, in bondage,
to the West Indies, while those named
in the book of negroes - 1336 men, 914
women and 750 children - were put on
Navy ships and British chartered private
transports headed for Nova Scotia.
The battered and defiled bodies of
these resilient souls landed in Nova
Scotia between April and November of
1783, where they created settlements
in Shelburne, Digby, Chedabucto,
Halifax and along the Bedford Basin on
Campbell Road (which would eventually
become known as Africville.) They
arrived in a country much like the one
they were unceremoniously evacuated
from, rife with racism and slavery.
Three decades later they were joined by
around 2,000 Black Refugees, African
slaves who escaped slavery in the War of
1812. Despite monumental challenges