Black History Pre-Confederation Many fled to Canada after the American Revolutionary War. About 30,000
settled in the Maritimes. They were soldiers and civilians, rich and poor, Black, White and Indigenous. By pledging allegiance, they were promised .

Approximately 3,500 African Americans arrived in where provisions and shelter were hard to come by. Some were enslaved by white Loyalists but many were free men.

They did not receive the equal claim of land as white Loyalists. Still, some thriving African American communities, like Shelburne, were established.

During the war of , more Black Refugees escaped enslavement by fighting on the side of the British and eventually moved to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. This group makes up the largest single source of ancestors for today’s Black Nova Scotian communities.

Since 1833, slavery was abolished in British North America. Before the civil war and the abolition of slavery in the United States, about American slaves escaped to Canada West and Nova Scotia through the .

“There was one of two things I had a right to—liberty or death. If I could not have one, I would have the other for no man should take me alive”- Harriet Tubman

Life in British North America was generally better for escaped slaves than the life they had come from; however, they were not always welcomed by white society. Many black people lived in separate communities, like , rather than in established towns and villages.