Homegrown black history was filling ears and hearts last week, as community members gathered in the Dalhousie SUB to hear Donna Byard Sealey and Juanita Peters speak about their zeal for local stories.
The Black History Month event, titled Storied Lives, was collaboratively hosted by the Black Student Advising Centre and the James Robinson Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies. Johnston Chair Afua Cooper explained that the event aimed to highlight the work of people from outside the academic community who have chronicled black history in Nova Scotia.
Looking for answers
Ms. Byard Sealey always wanted to know how her family got here. This genealogical interest led her to write Colored Zion, a book about the history of the Zion church and the Black people of Truro.
She told a captive audience, “I am what I’ve done. I am what I do. So let me preface what I do. I read read read.”
And Ms. Byard Sealey read every article in the Truro Daily News from the 1890s to 1947 as part of her time-consuming research for Colored Zion. After establishing the founders of Truro’s Zion United Baptist church, she compiled lists of veterans, notable individuals, marriages and funerals.
Colored Zion covers the distinct areas of Truro, studying the communities in order to refute myths. In her chapter on ministers, Ms. Byard Sealey wanted to dispel the notion of the unlettered and uneducated clergy. She said she hopes that historians will reassess the people mentioned in her book, and that scholars will write about personalities that have been previously overlooked.
“Once I read and connect, I must preserve my work and find a way to share it,” she said.
A BA, BEd, and MA graduate of Dalhousie University, Ms Byard Sealey is now involved in the Nova Scotia Organization for the Advancement of Coloured People and has won an award from the Truro Book Society for Colored Zion.
Listening for history
Ms. Peters introduced herself to the audience as a storyteller, saying, “I’ve always found that stories found me rather than the other way around.”
Her storytelling work includes writing and directing the documentary Hannah’s Story and working on the 2009 production Africville – Can’t Stop Now.
She began her varied media career as a newscaster for AVR in 1981. She later worked for CNFB Fredericton and as part of the CBC suppertime news team. As an actress, she has appeared on stage, on television, and on the big screen, and as a documentary filmmaker, she has won awards at Canadian and international film festivals.
Her first foray into the world of documentary filmmaking was with a film called I Made a Vow, which details the tradition of large wedding parties in North Preston.
“People don’t realize what we have in Nova Scotia. Go inch by inch, region by region and you learn so many different things,” said Ms. Peters.
Ms. Peters told listeners that her favourite gift is still a tape recorder she received as a child. She would put the recorder at the top of the stairs when she was sent to bed while her parents had visitors. She later used it to interview locals when the Groundhog Day storm hit Nova Scotia in 1976.
“My stories show what makes us all very much the same,” Ms. Peters said. “If we are going to know about ourselves and each other, we have to know what makes us tick.”
Ms. Peters is currently writing a script called “The Sand Family” based on her grandmother’s accounts of a tuberculosis hospital. She hopes to take the story to both the stage and the screen. She has also spent time mentoring young women in the storytelling process through Viewfinder’s week-long film workshop.
More at Dal
Storied Lives opened with the presentation of two Nora Kelly Bursary Awards to Dal students Adena Brown and Renaldo Cleare. Ms. Brown, from East Preston, is in her second year of a double major in psychology and sociology, and Mr. Cleare, who obtained his International Baccalaureate Program certificate in the Bahamas at age 13, is in his final year of business management.
Colored Zion, Hannah’s Story, and Africville – Can’t Stop Now are all available through the Novanet libraries.
Upcoming events can be found on the Black Student Advising Centre and the James Robinson Johnston webpages, as well as in the Black Student Advising Center’s newsletter, Africvoice.
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