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American History

Juneteenth and Other Lesser Known African-American Historical Culture

Colonel Tye - American Revolutionary War
Colonel Tye as portrayed in a PBS documentary. PBS
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35. Black Americans in Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia, where British Freedom and other black slaves were resettled after the American Revolution. Super City Realty

Nova Scotia’s British Freedom was not the sole black person eking a living in that out-of-the-way corner of North America. Hundreds of other black men, women, and children, pursued and went about their lives nearby. It was an inhospitable, cold, and wind-whipped coastal region sandwiched between spruce forests and an often-angry ocean.

Harsh and semi-barren Nova Scotia was quite different from the warmer regions and climes to the south, where most of British Freedom’s black neighbors were born and grew up. Still, he and they were fortunate to be where they were: nearly all of them were former slaves who had fled a life of bondage in America, and were resettled by the British beyond the reach of their erstwhile masters.

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A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.

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