In the 40 years since Halifax city fathers wiped it off the face of the earth, Africville—a tiny black community of 400 people that had snuggled and struggled to survive along the harbour’s edge for 150 years—has become a more iconic symbol than actual physical space.
For its former residents, the very mention of its name evokes an idyllic, partly idealized past where everyone knew your name and everyone’s mother was everyone else’s mother. For Nova Scotia’s black community more generally, Africville has become both a warning and also a rallying cry—“Never again!” For Nova Scotia whites of a certain age, the name usually prompts not only a hasty rationalization of the past—“those were different times”—but also a guilty reminder that the past, too often, does not seem all that past.
Jennifer J. Nelson is interested in those symbolic manifestations of Africville, but her real focus in Razing Africville: A Geography of Racism is much more narrow—on...
Stephen Kimber is a professor of journalism at the University of King’s College and co-founder of its Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program. His latest book, What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five, was published in 2013 by Fernwood.
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