Fredericton Regional Museum offers research material for a Black history curriculum

Researchers at the Fredericton Regional Museum are eager to share their knowledge of Black History in the Maritimes.

“It was history that was forgotten on purpose,” Melynda Jarratt – Fredericton Region Museum Executive Director.

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Museum researcher Graham Nickerson is a descendant of Black Loyalists that settled in St. Stephen in the winter of 1783 and Black pioneers that settled in Shelburne, Nova Scotia.

“The main things that has to come into the curriculum is the active white washing of history and the removal of blacks,” said Graham Nickerson, a researcher at the Fredericton Regional Museum.

The museums’ resources, imagery and research include the slave trade in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

“There is a myth that we didn’t have slavery in Canada. There’s plenty of records tying us to places like Maugerville for instance and we have evidence of Cornell Majors selling slaves in Halifax,” said Nickerson.

“We have done a deep dive into original primary resource documents that have never been looked at before, its wonderful material that is going to inform any new Black curriculum in the province,” said Jarratt.

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Black Lives Matter NB is working on the project with members of the University of New Brunswick’s faculty of Education.

“We’re looking forward to gaining access to this research that the Fredericton Museum has been doing that will further our understanding of black history within the Maritimes and help us on our journey,” said Husoni Raymond, a founding member of Back Lives Matter New Brunswick .

“Now that Black Lives Matter has come to the forefront the way it should be, I think it is opened the door to make those things that everybody else has been working on in the Black community come to life,”

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Black Lives Matter NB will be meeting with the premier next week to discuss their call to action and present a proposal on their educational campaign.

“Looking at what we have managed to accomplish in spite of all of the repression is quite empowering,” said Nickerson.