Among the Loyalists who were transported to the shores of New Brunswick
by the British after their defeat by revolutionary Americans were
several hundred African Americans. Like their counterparts who went to
what is now Nova Scotia, among this group were formerly enslaved men,
women and children who had been granted their freedom in exchange for
joining the British side during the revolutionary war.
In the colony that soon became New Brunswick, slavery was still legal.
Many African American Loyalists had to become indentured laborers to
survive in this new situation. Many others took up the opportunity
offered them in 1791 to move yet again, this time to Sierra Leone in
Africa where many Black Loyalists established a new colony on the coast
of Africa where they lived free of slavery.
The stories of New Brunswick's Black Loyalists are captured in the brief
biographies of eight individuals -- men, women and youths presented by
author Stephen Davidson. Through their experiences a picture emerges of
the narrow limits to the freedom which the Black Loyalists were able to
experience in a predominantly white and highly racist colony.