Following the American Revolution, free black communities and enslaved African Americans increasingly struggled to reconcile their African heritage with their American home. This struggle resulted in tens of thousands of African Americans seeking new homes in areas as diverse as Haiti and Nova Scotia. Black refugees arrived in Nova Scotia after the War of 1812 with little in common but their desire for freedom. By 1860, they had formed families, communities, and traditions. Harvey Amani Whitfield’s study reconstructs the lives and history of a sizeable but neglected group of African Americans by placing their history within the framework of free black communities in New England and Nova Scotia during the nineteenth century.

Harvey Amani Whitfield is the Centennial Carnegie Chair in the History of Slavery in Canada at University of King's College and Professor of History at Dalhousie University.  His other publications include Biographical Dictional of Enslaved Black People in the Maritimes (University of Toronto Press, 2022), Black Slavery in the Maritimes: A History in Documents (Broadview Press, 2018), and North to Bondage: Loyalist Slavery in the Maritimes (University of British Columbia Press, 2016).