Shelburne riots

The Black Loyalists faced a variety of racist disadvantages from denial of voting rights to harsher punishment before the courts.

Delays in supplies and awarding land grants created anger and frustration among the many disbanded soldiers, who suffered in the frontier town.

[5] On the night of July 25, the riot began as a large group of white men attacked David George and the Black Loyalists in Shelburne.

He returned at night to rescue his wife and children and they sought shelter in Birchtown along with most of the free Blacks who had formerly lived and worked in Shelburne.

[8] Attacks by rioters continued in town for ten days, targeting some white Loyalists, such as Thomas and James Courtney, who had received large land grants on the Roseway River to set up a sawmill.

Reports of the attacks spread around Nova Scotia; Simeon Perkins, in the town of Liverpool to the east, wrote, "An extraordinary mob or riot has happened at Shelburne.

The Governor of Nova Scotia, John Parr, traveled to Shelburne on August 23 to attempt to settle the disputes and delays in land grants.

[13] When whites attacked some Mi'kmaq people at Shelburne in November, the ringleader Edward Cavan was put in the stocks and sentenced to six months in prison.

It suffered the lack of agricultural land, a collapse of the whale fishery, and poor inland trade routes: four-fifths of the population left for other settlements.

[15] David George and more than 1200 Black Loyalists fled the racism and poverty of Shelburne in 1792 to settle Freetown, Sierra Leone where they became known as the Nova Scotian Settlers.

In addition, the riots are depicted as a mass lynching with hangings, multiple murders, and a church burning, which was not documented in fact.