"Africa’s Children is a testament to one’s heritage, a belief in one’s ancestors, and a record of truth … no told!" – Dr. Henry V. Bishop, chief curator, Black Cultural Centre, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

Chronicling the history of Black families of the Yarmouth area of Nova Scotia, Africa’s Children is a mirror image of the hopes and despairs and the achievements and injustices that mark the early stories of many African-Canadians. This extensively researched history traces the lives of those people, still enslaved at the time, who arrived with the influx of Black Loyalists and landed in Shelburne in 1783, as well as those who had come with their masters as early as 1767. Their migration to a new home did little to improve their overall living conditions, a situation that would persist for many years throughout Yarmouth County.

By drawing on a comprehensive range of sources that include census and cemetery records, church and school histories, libraries, museums, oral histories, newspapers, wills, The Black Loyalist Directory, and many others, this is a history that has been overlooked for far too long.

Sharon Robart-Johnson was born in the South End of Yarmouth; she is a thirteenth-generation Nova Scotian. Her roots reach beyond the Expulsion of the Acadians in 1755 to the arrival of the Black Loyalists in Shelburne in 1783, as well as an enslaved person brought to Digby County in 1798. In 2009 she published her first book, Africa’s Children: A History of Blacks in Yarmouth. Sharon is the Publications Chair of the Yarmouth County Historical Society, which owns and operates the Yarmouth County Museum and Archives. Her years of archival experience and passion for researching Black history has most recently culminated in historical fiction, a way to honour those omitted from colonial archives.

Sharon Robart-Johnson's profile page

Africa's Children is a leap forward in helping us to learn from our mistakes. One significant book does make a difference.

Atlantic Books Today

Robart-Johnson has scores of fascinating stories to tell about the history of blacks in Yarmouth.

Calgary Herald, The

Robart-Johnson traces the careers of Yarmouth born-and-bred Africadian heroes, heroines, and a few villains, too. Her careful research and lively prose establish, once again, that we descend from hardy, inventive, and resourceful souls.