The Significance of the Birchtown Race Riot of 1784 in The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill Rita 12th Grade

It is helpful to know where and what Birchtown is, prior to getting into details about the race riot of 1784. Birchtown is a municipality in Shelburne County, Nova Scotia, about 3 miles west of Shelburne. Look up Birchtown in any search engine, and you will very quickly find that it is a National Historic site in Canada. Shelburne County was built of British Loyalist refugees that arrived in 1783. Loyalists were people, black and white, who fought alongside the British during the American Revolution and were promised land, freedom, and relocation to Britain’s new colony, Nova Scotia. Black Loyalists for the most part lived in Birchtown, which generally became a place of refuge for escaped slaves in the new colony. At its peak, it was considered to be the largest community of free Blacks anywhere in North America, and even the rest of the world excluding Africa. However, this was in no way the promise land for Black people. We will soon come to see that while Black Loyalists were promised and given freedom in Shelburne, freedom is in no way equal to equality. Tensions between the races in Shelburne led to the first race riot in North America, which plays a huge role in our Canadian history, as well as the fictional novel The...