AFRICAN CANADIAN HISTORY JULY 26-1784

Murphy Browne © July 25-2019

AFRICAN CANADIAN HISTORY JULY 26-1784

On July 26-1784, Black Loyalists in Shelburne, Nova Scotia were attacked and their homes destroyed by their White neighbours. Those who managed to escape the 10-day reign of terror by fleeing to nearby “all Black” Birchtown, were pursued by the White mob, which continued the racially motivated attacks for another month. This atrocity is generally recognized as the first “Race Riot” in North America. The White supremacist culture that the Africans encountered when they were relocated to Nova Scotia in the years following the American Revolution climaxed on July 26-1784. Whether in Canada or the U.S., these attacks were erroneously called race riots when White people attacked communities of Africans. These were not “race riots” when White mobs tried to eliminate African communities. These were racially motivated attacks by White people, on clearly outnumbered and vulnerable African communities. Terrorism, ethnic cleansing or genocide might be more apt descriptions of these horrific acts.

While the violent destruction of the African American community of Wilmington, North Carolina (1898,) “Black Wall Street,” in Tulsa, Oklahoma (1921) and “Rosewood” in Florida (1923) are fairly well known, the violent mob attack on the African Canadian, Birchtown in Nova Scotia is hardly known. African Canadians were brutally beaten, some killed and their homes were destroyed. In his 1976 book, “The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone 1783-1870,” James W. St. G. Walker wrote about the plight of African Canadian preacher David George who fled from Shelburne to Birchtown: "Along with others of his colour, George sought refuge in Birchtown, but even here they were unsafe. While the force of the riot continued in Shelburne for at least 10 days, incursions into Birchtown were reported for up to one month."

The British government had encouraged the enslaved Africans in the USA to support them in the armed conflict with their American relatives. These “Black Loyalists” were resettled in Nova Scotia following the American Revolution. However, when the Black Loyalists were subjected to violent attacks and the destruction of their homes by a White Loyalist mob, there was not much support from the British. In October, 1788 when William Dyott, a British general passed by Birchtown, his recorded description in his diary, told a sorry tale. In “Dyott's Diary, 1781-1845; a Selection From the Journal of William Dyott, Sometime General in the British Army and Aide-de-camp to His Majesty King George III” Dyott noted: “Hood, Buller, and myself walked through the woods about two miles from the barracks to a negro town called Birch Town. At the evacuation of New York there were a great number of these poor devils given lands and settled here. The place is beyond wretched, situated on the coast in the middle of barren rocks, and partly surrounded by thick impenetrable wood. Their huts miserable to guard against the inclemency of a Nova Scotia winter, and their existence almost depending on what they could lay up in summer. I think I never saw such wretchedness and poverty so strongly perceptible in the garb and countenance of the human species as these miserable outcasts. I cannot say I was sorry to quit so melancholy a dwelling.”

The British had reneged on their promise to provide the Black Loyalists with land, assistance to establish homes and supplies to build homes. Instead the Black Loyalists were given infertile land, no means of building adequate housing, including inadequate supplies. Some were forced to become indentured labourers to white Loyalists and some were even tricked into re-enslavement.  

In 1775 the British governor of Virginia had issued an "emancipation proclamation" promising freedom and land to all enslaved Africans in the USA who would fight on the side of the British in the war between the British and their American cousins. Governor Dunmore desperately needed soldiers and between 800 and 2,000 enslaved Africans fled the plantations where they were enslaved and joined the British. Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment, a military unit, was organized and consisted of formerly enslaved Africans. The members of the Ethiopian Regiment wore uniforms inscribed with the insignia "Liberty to Slaves."

Approximately 12,000 formerly enslaved Africans fought for the British during the American Revolution. When the British lost the war and surrendered in 1783, one of the central points of contention, was the return of what George Washington deemed 'U.S. property,' which were the enslaved Africans. Some of those fighting men were betrayed by the British!

On May 6, 1783, the British and the Americans came to an agreement that any formerly enslaved who had joined the British ranks after November 30-1782, when the signing of a provisional treaty had ended British jurisdiction in the United States, could revert to the status of chattel or “property” under the treaty’s terms. The Americans and the British had negotiated a treaty which was signed on November 30-1782. The British surrendered those Africans who had arrived behind their lines after November 30-1783. From 10:00 a.m. until 2;00 p.m. every Wednesday between May and November of 1783, a “Book of Negroes,” kept by a joint British-American commission, was opened in Samuel Fraunces’s Queen’s Head Tavern on the corner of Pearl and Broad streets in Lower Manhattan. The details of each Black Loyalist’s enslavement, escape, and military service were documented. 

Those whose claims to freedom withstood challenge from the commissioners received certificates entitling them to transport from the United States. More than 3000 Black Loyalists enrolled in the Book of Negroes, and were transported to Nova Scotia which was then a British-ruled Canadian province. Between April and November, 1783, 114 ships were inspected in New York harbor before taking Black Loyalists away from the place where they had been enslaved.

Less than a year after the evacuation to Nova Scotia, the Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia were the victims of what has been termed the “Shelburne Riots.” Following the white mob attack which began on July 26-1784, many Black Loyalists from Birchtown and Shelburne, moved to other areas in Nova Scotia. In 1791, Birchtown residents were given the option of sailing to a new colony in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Many of them agreed to resettle in Sierra Leone and in 1792 they sailed to Sierra Leone. They preferred an uncertain future in Africa, to the conditions (including broken promises of assistance, infertile land, inadequate supplies and White mob violence) they had endured in Nova Scotia.

On January 15-1792, the descendants of Africans who had been kidnapped and enslaved in North America, left Halifax, Nova Scotia in 15 ships to return to the land from which their ancestors had been taken. Approximately 1200 Black Loyalists, left for Sierra Leone, greatly reducing the Birchtown population. 

In 1997, Birchtown was declared a National Historic Site and a museum complex commemorating the Black Loyalists was opened by the Black Loyalist Heritage Society. Although the offices and archives of the museum were mostly destroyed by an arson attack in 2006, a new facility, the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre, opened in June 2015. The resilience of the African Canadian community (descendants of the Black Loyalists) encapsulates Maya Angelou’s poem “Still We Rise.”

Murphy Browne © July 25-2019