Savannah Thomas: “As I sat around the table listening to my Black friends talk about the importance of Emancipation Day, I couldn’t help but feel ignorant. Embarrassment flooded over me when I realized that as a Black woman I had no idea what this day meant and why it was so important to our community.”
Wayne Desmond on how the Town of New Glasgow changed the name of a street to commemorate his great-great grandfather. “It’s truly an honour to stand on the shoulders of the elders in my family. To think about the hardships that they had to face while growing up, working and raising their families as Black people. It’s a true blessing to be able to preserve the rich history and legacy that my maternal family had started. It is because of their hard work, sacrifices and resilience that I am who I am. “
Raymond Sheppard: We are proud of our culture, heritage and lineage. The strength, spirit, courage, resilience, faith, hope, indomitable spirit, perseverance, pride, dignity, respect and honor that is in us is our inheritance from Mother Africa.
Elissa Barnard in conversation with Lindsay Ruck, author of Amazing Atlantic Black Canadians. “The Atlantic provinces are bursting with amazing Black Atlantic Canadians. This could be multiple volumes.”
Raymond Sheppard with a meditation on family and the need to forgive. “Covid-19 may be keeping us apart but it does not stop us from sealing the cracks in love.”
Raymond Sheppard: “With all the racism and hate we faced for hundreds of years, we still maintained Black values, many would say our values were sacred, and although every generation is different, we always seemed to cling to the things that keep us grounded and inspired.”
Rachel Zellars is an African-American academic, lawyer, and community organizer who has lived in Canada for more than a decade and a half, and in Halifax for the last couple of years. Wendie Wilson is an African Nova Scotian teacher, artist, writer, and community advocate whose family has been in the province for at least eight generations. Scott Neigh interviews them about the African Nova Scotian Freedom School that they were part of organizing this past summer.
Wayne Desmond: “The idea of Black spaces and the need for inclusive education have always been important to me. Why is it that it wasn’t until I went to university that I began to feel fully validated as a Black learner?”
As public debate rages about public space and memorialization, this is a chance to come and walk through the history together.
27 years ago the federal NDP snubbed Lynn Jones and the African Nova Scotian community, and today leader Jagmeet SIngh came to the North End public library to apologize for that slight on behalf of his party.