36. A Black Man Named British Freedom
There was a black man in Nova Scotia, whose name was British Freedom. That is not the beginning of a limerick. In the late eighteenth century, there actually was a black man named British Freedom, scratching a living from stingy soil outside the small community of Preston, a few miles from Halifax, Nova Scotia.
British Freedom was not the name he had been given at birth. Nor, for that matter, had he been born in Nova Scotia. How he came by his unusual name, and how he came to be in Nova Scotia, is part of a greater but lesser-known aspect of the American Revolution. A tragic tale of a historic turning point, when American history failed to turn on the issue of slavery and the rights of the country’s black population. A tale whose malign legacy lingers with us to this day.