Year Published Title Author Types of Ethnicity of

Literature Author
1964-67 The actual
Relocation
1973 Africville Donald H. J.
relocation report: Clairmon
A supplement
1980 A love Letter to Amanda Carvery Popular
Africville
1989 Africville: a Spirit Africville Popular
that lives on Genealogy Society

1991 Remember National Film Popular (film)

Africville Board of Canada
1999 Africville: The life Donald H. J. Academic
and death of a Clairmon
Canadian Black
community
2001 Environmental Howard McCurdy Academic
Racism
2000 Images of our Bridglal Pachai Popular
Past: Historic
Black Nova Scotia
2008 Razing Africville: Jennifer J Nelson White
A geography of
Racism
2009 The Children of Christine Welldon Popular
Africville
2011 Big town: A novel Stephens Gerard Popular
of Africville Malone
2011 Africville: A Jeffrey Colvin Popular
Novel (ONLINE
ARTICLE)S
2011 Rebuilding Shyronn Dre Architectural
Africville Smardon Master’s Thesis
2018 Displacing Ted Rutland Scholarly White
Blackness:
Planning, Power,
and Race in
Twentieth-Century
Halifax
2020 The Hermit of Jon Tattrie Autobiographical Black
Africville: The life (KINDLE)
of Eddie Carvery
2021 Righting Canada’s Gloria Ann Popular N/A (But
 Wrongs: Wesley produced
Africville: An by
African Nova Canadian
Scotian ethic)
Community is
Demolished – and
Fights Back

Due Nov 22

Winks
452 Nova Scotia. The proportion of Negroes under twenty years of age was much
larger than for other ethnic groups, and there was a striking excess of females. Virtually all
residents tested low on I.Q. examinations. Almost none held regular jobs, there was no school
nearby, and all of Africville's houses were judged inadequate. There was no sense of racial
pride, and Africville's children professed to dislike other blacks. 52 Earlier, Nova Scotian
whites had shrugged Africville off with the retort that Negroes lived in worse slums in the
United States. In 1945 the Halifax Civic Planning Commission had stated that Africville should
be razed; not until nine years later, when money was less tight, did the city consider what it
might do. The answer, for the most part, appeared to be nothing, for Africville was to
be viewed in the context of larger hopes for urban re-newal. "Africville," wrote the
designer of Halifax's redevelopment program in 1957, "stands as an indictment of society and
not of its inhabitants." Smarting under the growing attention the Canadian press outside the
Mari-times gave to Africville-newspapers as far away as Prince George, British Columbia,
denounced the slum as a blot on Canada's record in race rela-tions-the city fathers continued to
debate what to do. While discussion continued, the inhabitants of Africville fell even further
below the provincial norm in wages, housing, and sanitation. Residents were caught
scavenging at the adjacent city dump; and one-who said that he was looking for breakfast
for his family-was arrested. By 1960 the area was overrun by rats, and although the Negroes
asked to be con-nected to a source of fresh water, Africville continued to be served by a
contaminated well. By 1961, Africville's Negroes had been the subject of several intensive
studies by sociologists, town planners, and welfare officers; and as one black remarked, they
could not see that any good had come from all of the information scholars had gathered.
Indeed, one suspected that the city had found a way to sweep Africville under the rug of
scholarly inquiry and recommendation.
454Yet, in 1963 the Halifax Advisory Committee on Human Rights asked the City
Council to engage a researcher to survey the local scene so that he might say whether "a
study in depth is indicated." Accordingly, the city invited Dr. Albert Rose, Professor of
Social Work at the University of Toronto, to make such an assessment. Dr. Rose wasted
no time: eleven days after he completed his visit to Africville he submitted a terse state-
ment and a set of recommendations. Africville already was "one of the most intensively
studied communities in North America," he wrote, and "no further research in depth is
required or is likely to be helpful. . . . The time has come . . . for the City and the
people of Halifax to cease the study and the debate and to formulate and promulgate clearly, a
policy and a program of social action with respect to Africville." Pointing out that the
community's leaders "readily admit that Africville is a slum, that it should be cleared and
that it would long since have been cleared if its inhabitants were of a different racial
background," Dr. Rose urged un-deliberate speed. Nor should narrow fears be permitted
further to stay the necessary measures: "These negotiations must not be diverted or subverted
by the argument frequently heard by this investigator, that one or more features of a
possible settlement will set a precedent. Africville will not, we trust, occur again, and its
solution will not become a precedent."
The central block to quick action lay in finding a formula for properly
compensating Africville's property holders. The city wished to pay those who could prove
ownership--between twelve and twenty-five of the eighty families involved-enough to make a
down payment on older houses in the mid-city area; some of the homes in that area, as a fire in
1965 showed, did not meet modern building codes. Negroes who did not hold acceptable
deeds were to be compensated $500, in recognition of the equity they held in the general
community. But the Negroes felt that once Africville was cleared, the site would be used
for industrial development and land values would soar; they wished to be compensated
on the basis of the values they projected. Viewed from a bookkeeper's perspective, the
city's proposal was fair enough; viewed by the Negroes who felt they were to be
dispossessed, the sum seemed woefully inadequate.
While Rose did not attempt to supply a solution to the knotty problem of
compensation, he recommended that the city move immediately to an equitable solution, so
that clearance of the land might begin the following April and be completed by the end of 1966.
He also urged the city to view its financial offer as a minimum base for negotiating with
individual fami-lies, since variations in family size, marital status, and available employ-
ment should be recognized. Further, he thought, the Halifax Housing Authority should
admit families relocated from Africville into each hous-ing project as it was completed, in a
ratio of one in every five families so accommodated, to avoid creating a new ghetto within the
c~ty's center. The city should also supply free legal aid to help Africville residents purchase
homes. Although the city accepted several of Rose's recommendations, the performance
was not an encouraging one. Arguments over compensation continued to slow progress and
divided the Negro community. In 1965 the Halifax City Council showed itself almost
pathologically sensitive to criti-cism: when the city's welfare director allegedly remarked
that the city should have provided proper water and sewage facilities to Africville long before
relocation took effect, the council demanded that he resign. The Negroes regarded the
mayor as opposed to their interests on racial grounds: and rather than decreasing, interracial
tension appeared to grow. Mad-timers have never been known to move more rapidly
simply because out siders thought they should, and if some outsiders thought that twenty years
was a rather long time to effect the removal of Africville, perhaps in the context of local
problems and mores it was rapid enough. By January of 1967, when the last building fell
to the bulldozers, Africville was more than a designation on the city's old maps, however-it
was a word to which militant black Nova Scotians now rallied, the place which had led
two sociologists to conclude that Nova Scotian society was "traditionally racist." 55 The
situation was no better at New Road. There was less public concern, however, since this all-
Negro settlement was concealed from view, laying well out into the county rather than on the
city line, as Africville did. There some eighteen hundred Negroes lived apart in the largest
all-black com-munity in the Dominion. In the midst of a barren area from which all the
wood cover had been removed and along the sides of a lake that had been fished out, the
Negroes of New Road (or Preston North) drifted from one seasonal job to another. New Road
felt a sense of pride, however. Many residents claimed descendance from Governor
Wentworth because of his Maroon mistress, and the community held an annual
Emancipation Day celebration apart from the Halifax blacks. When in 1956 an Ontario-based
white researcher revealed in a nationally circulated magazine something of the moral and
economic plight faced by the residents of New Road, they erupted in anger over her
efforts. In nearby Dartmouth, however, this Maclean's article produced a more positive effect;
within hours the magazine was sold out, and the town, once proud to say that it contained no
slums, was jolted out of its complacency. The local Free Press, pointing out that most whites
did not know of the conditions at New Road, began a cam-paign to draw attention to
problems there, a campaign which continued over the next decade. As the wife of the Free
Press's editor noted, Nova Scotians were "honestly convinced they are beyond reproach and
that the negroes are all happy children at heart." To awaken any group to the need to combat
discrimination was "like battling with feathers." 56 By 1965 the battle had attracted national
attention because of the work of such men as William P. Oliver, now more radical in his
views, Burnley Jones, and a newcomer, Calvin Ruck-who had learned to speak out while
growing up in the union town of Sydney and who organized a Black United Front self-help
association among the residents. New Road would remain in the news into the next decade, as
a source for Nova Scotian voluntarism.5

Africville: the Life and death of a Canadian

Black community
Relocation of Africville from 1964 and 1967

What does the literature say? And what does it reveal to us about the history of Africville, its
demolition and the state of the issue now?
Interpersonal & the phenomenon of relocation

Donald H J Clairmon & Dennis W Magill

Africville: the Life and death of a Canadian Black community

Terms:
Technocracy is a form of government in which the decision-maker or makers are selected based
on their expertise in a given area of responsibility, particularly with regard to scientific or
technical knowledge.

Overview:
Events surrounding literature:
  Interesting to consider if the rise of social history and issues surrounding race coincide
with the concerns of the authors of these books and perhaps how those concerns were
shaped by this timeliness and how the events unfolded and of course its demographic
 1989 exhibition entitled ‘Africville: A Spirit That Lives On
 1991 award-winning film documentary Remembering Africville *inspired by the
exhibition
 Winning of zoning battle in 1991 that would encroach on Seaview Memorial Park
 1993/1994 coauthored publication of the Spirit of Africville
 1994 the Genealogical Society and the city council came to an agreement
 The agreement called for the educational fund and the donated land as specified in the
staff report but also allowed the Genealogical Society access to municipal records to see
if a legal claim could be made against the City; the mayor commented that "if there is a
legal basis for a claim, they can still pursue it and we won't hold them up.”
 Concurrently the Genealogical Society received funding from Heritage Canada to
undertake the pertinent research.
 The live-in protest by the two brothers started in 1994 and continued until late spring
1995 when under legal pressure, they moved to a site just outside the fenced parkland.
The sit-in never did become a rallying point for Africville-centered protest.
Editions
 Both editions are highly condensed versions of the authors' Africville Relocation Report
published in 1971 by the Institute of Public Affairs, Dalhousie University. The 1987
edition contains new material which enriches the 1974 analysis.

Preface to the 1974 Edition:

 Authors became critical of the way the relocation happened and the liberal-welfare model
of planned social change
 Readers should not attempt to single out as “villains in the piece” individual persons or
agencies. Rather they should evaluate the relocation in terms of mechanisms that were
operating within a complex social system.
 Questions we should consider in relation to the book & its editions:
o How does a community or an area become ripe for relocation?
o How can advocacy bearing on the interests of poor or marginal members of
society be mobilized effectively?
 Africville research was patterned after the 1967 research proposal; subsequently, our
mutual exchange of ideas led to new research directions. Our research and writing
responsibilities followed our respective sociological interests:
 Each scholar had a different sociological interest:
o Clairmont was concerned with the relocation phenomenon, changes in
Africville’s social structure, the relocation from the perspective of the Africville
residents, and life after the relocation
o Magill focused on the decision-making and bureaucratic dimensions of the
relocation and the relocation from the perspective of political-administrative
individuals.

Preface to the 1987 Edition:

  Of course, the story as told may be somewhat mythical in its romanticization of
community life and its unqualified conspiratorial allegation as regards city officials, but it
reflects a coherent, valid position even if it is not the only possible valid story.
 Why does Africville continue to be so meaningful for its former residents? One might
contend that it is because they never did get the new start promised them in the relocation
liberal-welfare rhetoric.

Preface to the 1999 Edition:

The last chapter was added in this edition as a way of deconstructing the community nine after
the last resident was relocated from Africville.

Introduction:
 Considered a “shack town”
 Question of whether or not Black people wanted to or enjoyed living in Africville

The reaction of city Alderman in relation to the relocation of Africville: 1968:

The social significance of the Africville program is already beginning to show positive results as
far as individual families are concerned. The children are performing more satisfactorily in
school, and they seem to take more of an interest in their new surroundings. This report is not
intended to indicate that the program has been 100 percent successful; however, I believe it can
be said that it has been at least 75 percent, judging by the comments of the relocated families.
Four types of relocation models:
1. Traditional
a. Planned social change characterized by self-help and self-direction
b. Indigenous minority-group leaders who plan and carry out the relocation,
generally with official support and some resource commitment by government
agencies
c. Laissez-faire strategy whereby the relocates benefit directly and technical
expertise is used to advise rather than direct
2. Development
a. It considers renewal, as a public activity, to be intervention in a market and
competitive system and to be justified by the need to make up for imperfections in
the market mechanism that impede the adjustment process, to eliminate
conditions which are economic or social liabilities.
b. Focussed on questions of beautification, zoning, and structure (intended to
increase the city tax base and achieve civic pride or attract industry
3. Liberal welfare
a. Purported to benefit the relocates primarily and directly
b. Welfare officials often saw themselves as “caretakers” for the relocates
tenant advocate
c. It was "undemocratic" in the same sense as the development model; the low-
status relocatees were accorded little attention, either as participants in the
implicit political process or as contributors to specific policies or plans of action.
There was an effort, however, to persuade rather than to ignore the relocatees.
 d. The relocatees were to be major beneficiaries through compensation, welfare
payments, and rehabilitative retraining programs. The major problem with the
relocation was that, although rooted in liberal welfare rhetoric, it failed to achieve
its manifest goals.
4. Political
a. The political perspective assumed that relocates benefited both directly and
indirectly, directly in terms of, say, housing and other welfare services, and
indirectly by participating in the basic decision-making and the determination of
their life situation.

Differ according to:

 Ideological Premises
 Formulation of policy
 Implementation of policy
 Intended beneficiaries
 Central actors and organization units
 Key problems

The framework of the Book:

 Focused on the perspective of power and exchange
 Equally important, by placing the Africville relocation within a typology of relocation
models, it is possible to explore the domain consensus (that is, the basic terms of
reference held in common and prerequisite to any exchange) associated with the
liberalwelfare approach, and especially how such domain consensus (for example,
"disadvantaged communities or people have few intrinsically valuable resources and need
to be guided by sympathetic experts") develops and how it sets the limits and context of
bargaining and reciprocity.

Methodology:
 Initial in-depth interviews, historical documents, newspapers, case studies and bull
session
 Two other research tactics were employed at the same time as the interviews were
conducted. One of our assistants was conducting in-depth, tape-recorded interviews with
black leaders in the Halifax area concerning their assessment of Africville and the
implications of relocation. Another assistant was gathering historical data and
interviewing selected Africville relocatees concerning the historical development of the
community.

Some local government officials objected to what they have referred to as the researchers'
"activist" bias. The researchers maintain, however, that exchanges had to be worked out with the
subjects of research as well as with the funding agencies.

1968-1969
Throughout the study, we consciously and deliberately attempted to achieve a viable fusion of
research and social responsibility.
Introduction:
 Preface:

 In the first place, the relocation process is still taking place and it would be
premature to describe and analyze the strategies followed by the City of Halifax
and the relocates and to sum up their respective perceptions of gains and losses as
a consequence of the relocation exchange. Secondly, a more detailed analysis of
the pre-relocation development of the Africville community would be useful in
understanding how communities become “ripe” for relocation, and how resident’s
capacity to frame alternatives and to effect profitable relocation strategies
becomes limited.1
 These officials are constrained by their mandate, the resources made available to
them, and the nature of relationships among various agencies, and their behavior
should be analyzed in terms of roles within the larger political-administrative
framework.
 In taking a structuralist perspective in describing the decision-making and the
mechanics of the Africville relocation, we have striven to be independent and
analytical. We trust that the reader will evaluate the relocation as being a result of
mechanisms operating within a complex social system, and not single out for
criticism any individual person or agency2.

 “In public conception, the proposed relocation was a progressive step

 In addition to official pronouncements, there were other indications that the Africville
program would be more humane and progressive than the typical North American urban
relocation.
 Preliminary discussion between Africville residents, “caretaker” group of Black and
White professionals associated with the Halifax Human Rights Advisory Committee.
 -2
 Africville had attracted national and even international notice, and there was broad public
interest in the relocation. Africville had become well-known as a Black ghetto, as an
illustration of how Canaada had handled the “race problem.” In Canada as in the United
States, most have been either low in socio-conoimc status or members of a minority
group, or both. Indeed some writers have viewed contemporary relocation as a race or
class struggle.3
 The three aspects of relocation studied and evaluated in the report are Housing, Social-
psychological and political-administrative aspects.6
 The perspective of the report is that of exchange and power. Conceiving the relocation as
a “contract” between govenerment and relocates, we focus attention on the negotiating
stratefies, resourcse, gains, and loses; each party’s perception of the other’s stratefies,
gains and losses; and each party’s sense of “justice” in the relationship.15

1
Clairmont et al., xiii.
2
Clairmont et al., xiii.
  On one hand the research project allowed for action to occur such as the instigation of the
“second phase of the africivlle relciatoin”.However, relocates found the second phase
inadequate to meet their needs.33
 Other anticipated programs, promised action by the City, were delayed or forgotten due
to bureaucratic entanglements and to lack of organization and pressure on the part of the
relocates.33-34.
 A third phase of the relocation begin in the fall of 1969 and winter of 1970-34.

Chapter 2: Black settlement in Nova Scotia and the Development of Africville

 There is much discucion by Clairmon and Magill on the marginality of Nova Scotian
Black and the racist society they are ostrasized by in relation to its historical form as a
slave society. However, the same rigor does not exist in relation to the evaluation of the
relocation. 37

Chapter 3: Africville social structure: An overview

 City ordinances and the encroachment of industry and government had led to the
disappearance of farm animals, and pollution of Bedford Basin had virtually eliminated
fishing. Yet, even as late as the early 1960’s, the editor of a Halifax newspaper felt able
to refer to Africville as the “last rural remanent in Halifax peninsula”66
 Residents had to do without paved roads ( or even dust deterrent_, convenient public
transportation, sewerage, water, or garbage collection.66
 One social scientist has described Africville as follows: “There are no roots here; it is
almost a community in suspension, a stepping-stone in the pattern of a population
movement from the rural settlements to the larger cities of Montreal and Boston 62
 The church was one of the few ways that Africville residents were traditionally linked to
other Black communities in Halifax County and White congregations in the city. 71
 As early as 1860, Africville residents had petitioned the provincial government for
provincial aid to support a qualified teacher
 At the time of relocation in 1964, two very small stores were operating in Africville.
Several Africville women, a few of whom were licensed, performed traditionally the
roles of midwife and general therapist in the community. As Africville became less
remote from the rest of the city in the decades preceding relocation (and as city health
services expanded and local expectations rose), such traditional roles diminished in
importance.
 Clairmont claims that while “Africville residents were oppressed by poverty and neglect,
their plight was not unnoticed. The minutes of the Halifax City Council show that since
the turn of the century Council repeatedly received petitions and considered taking action
about conditions in Africivlle.77 In this and in other instances, the matter was shelved
and nothing was done.
 A city official stated that: I believe that given a little incentive, the people of Africville
would have had lovely homes and would have made a real effort to come up to a
level.”78
 Such judgements are consistent with the general pattern of race relations that has existed
in Nova Scotia for the past hundred and fifty years.
 “Building codes could be ignored.79
  It was those squatters and tramps, building those shacks, fighting and drinking and
getting into trouble with the law, who gave Africville a bad name; and radio and T.V.
made it worse by picking the worst shacks to write about. 81
Chapter 4: The major institution: the Seaview African Baptist Church
Chapter 5: Prelude to Relocation: 1855-1962

 Minutes of the Halifax City Council show that the eventual industrial use of Africville
land was a matter of long-standing implicit intent. This “policy was a reason for
Coucnil’s neglect of Africivlle residents. The expropriation and eventual industrial use of
the land would require relocation of Africivlle residents; therefore, it was not necessary to
supply the community with water, sewerage, paved roads, garbage collection, or adequate
fire protection.
 The days of the settlement mwere numbered.
 Timeline of pre-relocation violence:142
o 1907-The city of Halifax purchased land to the east of Africville
o 1915- Intended industrial use of the Africville land confirmed
o 1915- The impeorial Oil Compnay bids for Africville land
o 1916- Afriville for industrial use
o 1938- the industrial-use proposal remains unchanged
o 1945- Africville for residential use (for whites) #residential, park, and shopping
centre complex
 The commission stated that, given the removal of the city prison, the
abattoir, and Africville, the cleared area could become “a most desirable
residential section.”146
o 1947 Africville land zoned as industrial
o 1948-Africville residents say no to relocation
o 1951-Africville land still zoned industrial
o 1954-Halifax City Council approves a proposal to obtain a fifteen-acre industrial
site by shifting Africville
o 1955-Development of the Bedford Basin Shore
o 1957-The industrial Mile proposal (Stephenson’s Report)
o 1962-North Shore Development Plan (this last plan set the real stage for
eliminating Africville.

Chapter 6: The relocation decision:1962-1964

 A statement about the city development Department’s recomindation to relocate

Africville residents appeared in the Mail-Star on Agust 1, 1962 159
 In Aguust 1962- the National Committee on Human Rights formed Halifax Human rights
advisory committee.
 For sixteen months the committee explored alternatives to relocation
 1963- A report written by Dr. Albert Rose (UofT), recommended that Africville be
expropriated and cleared.
 The City Manager wrote to the Mayor and the Town Planning Board explaining that City
staff must “examine and recommend a solution to the Africville problem”161
  Their neglect was addressed as an issue of a lack of organization instead of the City
council’s continual neglect.
 Six years later, Dr. Rose states that: “ I just didn’t see the need for refined research in
order to reach a decision. And then finding that my attidue toward what we were doing
was not as clear sI thought it was. Today I might make an entirely new recommendation
about both research and about the nature of the program, and all the rest of it.
 There’s a certain level of impartiality to Dr. Rose and his ability to explain himself after
the fact??? 226
 Report approved January 2, 1964
 As opposed to answering questions surrounding the reason for the relocation of
Africville, Clairmont instead chose to categorize the relocation according to the different
types of relocations he outlined earlier – 232.
 As noted earlier, the relocation of Africville was long considered by City officials and
planners. Two explanations emerge clearly from interviews with the caretakers,
politicians, and City Hall officials associated with the relocation:
o Distaste for adverse publicity
o Humanitarian concern.

These factors were pressures towards a decision for relocation, but the data suggest additional
significant factors.
Adverse publicity came in:
 MacLean’s magazine 1965
 Star Weekly 1966
 New York Times 1964
 Dalhousie University study (Mail Star)) 1962

 The Africville official relocation plan actually never came to fruition, but the relocation
remained. 269
Chapter 7: Mechanics of the Relocation: 11964-1969 (Skipped)

 Lack of communication existed between the relocation social worker and the Welfare
Director 292

Chapter 8: Life After the Relocation

 The Floundering Phase

o The relocates became victims of this “bureaucratic buck passing”, the middle
calss liberal caretakers assumed that a follow-up program was being developed.
 The continuation and Re-examination phase
 Put into social housing 337
 Vague hopes are a poor sbusittue for detailed planning and serious commitment. 351

Chapter 9: The Implications of the Africville Relocation

 Some city officials, miffed by recent criticisms of the relocation and annoyed with the
continuing demands for redress made by the Africville Action Committee and its
sympathisers, hold the view that already the relocates have received more than “strict
jstice” would demand;-355
 Beyond some public expression of concern, and quiet urging of City benevolence, Black
leaders and organizations were involved in the Africville Relocation only to the extent
that several Blacks participated in the Halifax Human Rights Advisory Committee and,
subsequently, in City Coucnil’s Africville Subcomitee.358
 One of the most important weeknesses in the Africivlle relcoaiton was the lack of
adequate discussion of the problem situation and the absesnece of stratefy for effecting
significant social change amoung Africville residents.371
 The welfare approach to planned social change invariably confronts the power and
conservatism of bureaucracy.372
 Criticism of the welfare approach and welfarism, when directed against bureaucrats,
often is merely scapegoating that deflects attepion from the political system itself and the
interests of a power elite.373
 Consequently, impetus for the relocation of Africville did not come from the Welfare
Office; nor under the circumstances, was there much liklijhood that it would be charged
with significant responsibility for reloation-374
 Clairmont and Magill certainly suggest that the relcoaiton was a result of multiple
failures, some on the part of the Africville residents and some on city bureaucracy
(certainly not individuals or agencies??)
 Given the bureaucratic arrangements of the Africville relocaiton, and the normal
tendency for a bureaucracy to hover close to its “legal” responsibilies, it is not suprsiing
that the emphasis of the Development Departmentw as on the clearing of land and on real
estate negotiations.375
 In the Africville relcoaiton, external pressure was expressed institutaionally rhough
participation of the the three Black caretakers from the Halifax Human Rights dvisory
Committee on the Africville Subcomitee.376
 There is major difficulty, generally, in achieving organization amoung the poor, for their
poverty obstructs the development of ramifying and consolidated exchange systems.377
 There is a desire to label things as presumptions as opposed to racism378
Book:

 Explanation of the intensification of concern lies in the convergence of an

improved ideological climate and a desire by city officials in landscarce Halifax
to redevelop Africville as part of a larger scheme of industrial and commercial
development
 Community activists and government officials who had been active in the
relocation decision-making generally expressed regret about the relocation
program, contending that while their intentions were honourable the
circumstances at the time left them little room for manoeuvre
 Clearly then the 1989 exhibition/conference and its aftermath buried the former
consensus-based social construction of Africville. The positive aspects of
Africville now were strongly emphasized and the negative ones minimized.
Remember Africville (1991) 
Remembering Africville, depicts the issue of Canadian identity politics more than perhaps
previously discussed in a large portion of the literature. The beginning clip, where an Africville,
descendent was asked what he answers when asked where he comes from. His answer, proudly,
was “Africville.” The documentary recounts the re-examination of Africville. “We live in our
own detached homes.” Everybody’s house was painted a different color. “Where the pavement
ended, Africville began.” “Where Africville ended, the city dump began.” Through the dump,
they were able to get materials that they could not afford.” Burning old car batteries to keep
warm and got lead-poisoning from trying to keep warm.” If the city had taken care of the city
instead of neglecting it, it would have been better than what it looks like today. “National
housing Acting- an attempt to regulate housing conditions in an attempt to improve the housing
front. When you own a piece of land in this country you’re not a second-class citizen. The
“TOTAL” Halifax community was embarrassed, which allegedly pushed on the city officials to
“take care” of Africville. The Black people of the remainder of the province were not united
enough to come together to support the Africville demolition. Indigenous Seed money?

Living conditions being substandard:

To us that was home, no matter what the houses looked like.
Their living conditions were similar to other Black communities in Halifax
They moved them out in garbage trucks
It destroys people’s sense of who they are. You have no separate identity, because everything is
the same.

Consider perhaps the response to the documentary:

https://www.globalemergentmedia.com/videocontent/cims%3A-remember-africville-and-
incident-at-restigouche-w%2F-delvina-bernard-(online-event)

Overall, the main thing to glean from the documentary is the contrast of two phenomena present
in the discussion on Africville. The first, is the fact that between residents’ experiences and the
historical responses captured (newspaper articles, television broadcasts, reports, etc.). Secondly,
the other contrasting perspective is that between Africville descendants who discuss the lasting
impacts of the relocation and condemn city officials, in addition to the city officials and their
recounting of their decision making. When we consider both perspectives, in contrast to each
other, both in a way seem as though they are biased in the sense that they put a larger emphasis
on aspects that impact their group more so. For the city officials, absolving themselves of blame
or guilt, certainly allows them to steer clear of any legal ramifications as well as keeps their
social capital intact in the fact of dire circumstance. Alternatively, Africville descendants discuss
the long-lasting impacts of the relocation, the failed promises, in addition to the corrupted
consultation that took place over such a short period of time. If we consider even the aftermath of
the event, the ability to hold constant a narrative that is apathetic to the pain caused to Africville
residents, the power remains in the city officials’ quarters.
Razing Africville: A Geography of Racism
A critical race analysis

1. Authoring Africville: A Selected History

a. She, as a white scholar, is responding to the notion by other white settlers that
Africville’s destruction was an unfortunate incident that was born of a necessary
and humanitarian effort.
b. Her take is that the events that occurred were incessantly due to racist
conceptualizations of Black settlement. Her goal is to demonstrate the matter-of-
fact banality of racism that belies shock while conveying the very ugliness and
violence of that banality.
c. Admits that she has written this story from a particular point of view: That of the
razing of Africville is a story of white domination, a story of the making of a slum
and the operational technologies of oppression and regulation over time
d. She looks closely at the actions and words of whites in positions of authority in
and around the Africville decision – that is, the academic studies, urban planning
and social work reports, city council discussions, journalism, and mainstream
news that shaped how blacks were viewed and portrayed by whites in Nova
Scotia shortly before, during and after the destruction of Africville.
e. How does power operate in such a way that certain actions and outcomes – and
not other actions and outcomes – appear self-evident? (14)
f. Discourses construct the topic itself and the meanings that surround it (14)
g. By examining discourse, we look for the ways in which talk about atopic allows
meanings to emerge and how a statement garners the power to dominate, to render
other meanings untrue or unspeakable – as not able to be spoken – at a certain
historical time. (15)
h. Race as a concept has long been employed to mark groups as inferior, to rank
groups hierarchically, and to set certain groups apart from the dominant society –
bodily, spatially, and socially. Such beliefs about race remain deeply entrenched
in contemporary societies; they have not been simply abandoned as arbitrary since
theories of biological inferiority have been debunked.
i. The ‘colourblind’ approach to racism – ‘we are all the same’ – is employed much
less as an anti-racist position and more as a denial that race and its consequences
continue to profoundly shape individual lives and social relations: if we don’t
name it, it doesn’t exist. Further, this neoconservative notion that race is simply
an archaic misconception is often applied for particular political ends –to deny
ongoing systemic inequality.
j. Ultimately, this analysis disrupts the common assumption that the relocation
program was based on good intentions which simply failed. It does so by insisting
that racial discourses and spatial management have always been pervasive and
deliberate; they exist at all levels of decision making
2. Placing Africville: The making of the Slum
 3. Knowing Africville: Telling Stories of Blackness
4. Razing Africville: Fusing Spatial Management and Racist Discourse
5. Reconciling Africville: The Politics of Dreaming and Forgetting

Displacing Blackness: Planning, power, and

Race in Twentieth-Century Halifax
There was no place in this plan for the Mi’kmaq, even as the plan pertained to territory that they
had occupied and claimed for millennia. In relation to planning’s objectives, there-fore, the
Mi’kmaq were positioned as an “external enemy,” and only by “root[ing] them [out] entirely”
could these planning objectives be real-ized.4 

His main argument is that modern urban planning is formed by particular entanglements with
power and race. Displacing blackness, physi-cally and symbolically, is the unending work of
modern planning.

In other words, I am interested not simply in the practices of recognized urban planners and
ocial urban planning departments, but also in a very wide array of institutions
and actors that seek to shape the collective management of urban space. Long before a 
certified urban planner was hired in Halifax, urban spaces were studied, planned, and regulated
in the expectation of achieving a specified outcome. 

Planning’s dreadful effects, perhaps because they are so difficult to square with its professed
concern for life, are typically treated as an aberration or mistake. They are seen as a deviation
from planning’s proper role, a deviation most often attributed either to prevailing economic
exigencies (e.g., the need for planning to facilitate capital accumulation) or to a flawed 
political epistemology (e.g., a “modernist” rational-ity ttoo confident in its 
comprehension of the city  and  its capacity to bring about a substantially better
order of things). (7)

While not focussed on Africville, this book examines and exposes who race and power are
entrenched in modern planning practices and was partially inspired by the story of Africville.

The rest set of studies documents racial subjugation but fails to explain why it should

be understood as racial, while the second set documents class subjugation but fails to explain
why it should not be understood as racial (when it implicates people of colour). I am perhaps
most wary of the second set.

Clearly contending with the belief that slum dwellers were inher-ently immoral, Armitage and
his parish continually stressed the con-nection between “the habits of the people” and “the
indescribable character of the places in which they live. (48)
The aim of housing reform, consequently, was to improve the living conditions of white
residents, while those of Black as I show in chapter 3) were either left unimproved or ren-dered
much worse. (55)

After denying the Board’s asser-tion that their home was “lthy,” Mrs Orton 

explained that “the rooms were as clean as they could be made.”76 Mrs Orton and her
family had evidently deed earlier orders to vacate their home, staying put 
even after an authority had removed the home’s windows in the still-frigid month of March.
Having refused to leave a windowless Halifax home in the enduring winter season, it is unlikely
that the Ortons would respond any dierently to the board’s renewed call for 
their eviction (which the article recounts). (60)

Planning the Town White: Comprehensive Planning, Scientific

Racism, and the Destruction of Africville

The most significant growth in the city’s Black population
 occurred between 1783 and 1784, when Loyalist migration from the United States
(following the Revolutionary War) brought to Nova Scotia roughly thirty-five 
thousand white Loyalists, 1,200 to 2,000 Black people enslaved by white
Loyalists, and three thousand free Black Loyalists. The Black Loyalists were people who
had escaped their enslave-ment to American rebels to fight on the 
British side of the Revolutionary War and were provided residence, land, and
freedom in Nova Scotia by the vanquished British state. The freedom they found in Nova
Scotia was always a relative one. It was constrained, among other things, by their
residence in a society that still practised slavery and where the threat of the re-
enslavement was ever present. (80)

 Two further migrations between 1796 and 1834 augmented the Black population of 
the Halifax region. The furst group of migrants, six hun-dred to nine
hundred Jamaican Maroons, evaded British slavery in the Caribbean to settle in the
Halifax region in 1796. Finding conditions un-acceptable in their new home, most but not
all of the Maroons moved on to Sierra Leone and the new city of Freetown four years
after their arrival. The second group, roughly two thousand Black refugees, es-caped 
their enslavement in the United States to fight on the British side 
of the War of 1812. Like the Black Loyalists, they were offered 
land and residence in Nova Scotia after the war, ultimately making the move in
successive waves between 1812 and 1834.

Accordingly, the homes constructed in this period were modest in size and form, consisting
mostly of narrow, two-storey saltbox homes erected with com-munity-supplied (rather than paid)
labour.

Running water, which citizens of Halifax were able to expect in their homes, “no matter how
out-of-the-way ... they may locate them,” was similarly absent in Africville.42 Rather than
running water, the city’s  efforts  in Africville were limited  to modest 
assistance with the construction of shallow well in 1852 (an action taken in response to
petitions from the residents), as well as assistance with the repairing of this ill-functioning water
source later on

This negative effect was brought about, principally, through the regulation of land

use. From the 1850s onward, the most undesirable and noxious facilities in the city had a
tendency to be sited on Africville’s doorstep. In the 1850s, a prison and a “night soil” de-posit pit
were constructed in the area by the city. (88)

The community of Africville, in particular, was left un-touched by these interventions’ positive
aspirations and forced to bear the costs of positive aspirations actually fulfilled 
elsewhere. These seem-ingly incongruous effects can be attributed, in part, 
to the economic cal-culations of various city offcials but relate more 
fundamentally to the racial assures constitutive of emerging conceptions of 
aggregate human life like the “population” and the “city as a whole.” Consistent with con-
temporary forms of scientifc racism, these conceptions were premised on
hierarchical divisions between biologically “stronger” and “weaker” elements, and tended to
route projects of society-wide survival and advancement through an almost ineluctable racial
calculus – an evaluation, if nothing else,  of different “races,” varying  degrees of 
advancement, and  their  varying  effects  on  the  advancement  of  the 
overall  popula-tion. (114)

Africivlle: An African Nova Scotian

Community is Demolished – and Fights
Back
As the title suggests, this piece of popular literature, presents the story of Africville, as a tale of
two truths, one of demolition on the part of the City of Halifax planning department, and the
protest of such events by the African-Nova Scotian population of Africville. In some ways the
book reduces some of the nuances other scholars present as disturbances of the narrative that the
destruction of Africville occurred due to racist notions of a need to displace Blackness. This
quick monograph made no attempts to recount the intricacies of the debates and certainly took
the concerns of the community as the focus of its discussion. Furthermore, the focus on the
communites hay-days and activist efforts after the demolition make up the majority of this book
and yet in its simplification presents perhaps the reality that the scholarly texts attempt to
disagree on. While some scholars try to ar