Whoville?

Almost from the beginning of its destruction, commencing in 1964, the 150-year-old African–Nova Scotian (Africadian) community of Africville became the go-to site for must-read journalistic interviews, editorial commentary, and sociological study. It became the de rigueur way for Canadians to discuss the ongoing civil rights movement in the United States while deploring an “obvious” example of segregation in a “backward” province. (See, for instance, Guy Henson’s 1962 booklet, The Condition of the Negroes of Halifax City, Nova Scotia, and the 1974 academic masterpiece Africville: The Life and Death of a Canadian Black Community, by Donald Clairmont and Dennis Magill.) Then, within five years of the forcing out of the last-ditch, last-stand, Africville bitter-ender, in 1970, the African American immigrant Frederick Ward published Riverlisp: Black Memories, his 1974 novel infused (allegedly) with the wistful, nostalgic, bluesy voices of former...