Our college media department is doing a special feature during Black History Month by having a few students and staff members reflect on an influential black historical figure that has inspired them. My first thought of course was Martin Luther King Jr. There is no black person who has been more inspiring to me. But he would be the choice for many other Christians. I need to choose someone else. Plus, I’m Canadian and we need to recognize more black Canadians in our history. Viola Desmond came to mind as she has received some attention by being featured on our new ten dollar bill. She is known as Canada’s Rosa Parks for her refusal to give up her seat in a movie theatre for white patrons. But I wanted someone that most people had never heard of. I’m an educator; I wanted this opportunity to be educational for our social media audience.
I teach Anabaptist History which is primarily European but I have a fascination with Canadian history, especially the unique stories of Christianity in Canada. I thought back to my seminary days in Toronto when I took a course on the history of Christianity in Canada. David George! Henry Alline got most of the attention for the revivals on the east coast but David George did get a mention in the course. I did a bit more research to fill in my failing memory and even found his memoirs available online. It is one of the most important early slave memoirs available. What a precious resource!
David George was born in 1742 in Virginia, the son of slaves brought from Africa. He was converted to the Baptist faith during the Great Awakenings and was involved in founding the first black church in the American colonies in 1775. During the Revolutionary War he was among a number of slaves who found refuge behind British lines and he subsequently accepted passage to Nova Scotia as a British loyalist along with thousands of other black slaves.
He settled near Shelburne with his wife and three children. Because he was a pastor he was given a small plot of land. His response makes it obvious that he was a Baptist! “It was a spot where there was plenty of water, and which I had secretly wished for, as I knew it would be convenient for baptizing at any time.” The church grew rapidly; they built a meetinghouse, and even attracted white congregants. But when he baptized white folks there was resistance and a race riot ensued.
How did David George respond to the persecution? “I continued to preaching till they came one night, and stood before the pulpit, and swore how they would treat me if I preached again. But I stayed and preached, and the next day they came and beat me with sticks and drove me into the swamp. I returned in the evening, and took my wife and children over the river to Birchtown, where some black people were settled, and there seemed a greater prospect of doing good then at Shelburne. I preached at Birchtown… and baptized about twenty three.” He went on to baptize hundreds and planted a number of churches in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
All the while, living conditions for black people in what was to become Canada were no better than they had been in the American colonies. David George and his family—they now had five children—accepted the invitation to resettle in the British colony of Freetown in Sierra Leone. There he continued his ministry of baptizing and pastoring. He wrote his memoirs while on a visit to London, England.