Ep. 94 | THE BOOK OF NEGROES: Black Histories Straddling the U.S.-Canada Border
THE BOOK OF NEGROES (2015)
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (Aminata Diallo) and Cuba Gooding, Jr. (Sam Fraunces) in THE BOOK OF NEGROES Photo credit: CBC
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The 8th podcast in the Revolution to Rights: America at 250 series (Episode 94). The Boston Sisters (Michon and Taquiena) talk with Lawrence Hill author of the 2007 novel The Book of Negroes inspired by an 18th-century British military ledger documenting African Americans who sought freedom by serving the British during the American Revolution. The novel follows Aminata Diallo's journey from Africa to Nova Scotia and beyond, highlighting themes of freedom, family, and migration. Hill, who co-wrote the 2015 CBC mini-series adaptation, shares insights on the novel's creation, Canada’s complex history of slavery, the shared history between African Americans and African Canadians, and the impact of book bans on historical narratives. The conversation also touches on the importance of preserving and sharing diverse historical perspectives.
Content Note: In Episode 94 “Negroes” is only mentioned and referenced in the context of the historical 1783 ledger, novel and series titles.
“The thing that excites me is to find little-known stories that involve connections between African Americans and African Canadians, and find ways to stitch those together in surprising ways in fiction. Most of my novels do involve characters who are moving across that very porous border”
REVOLUTION TO RIGHTS: AMERICA AT 250
Episode 92 is part of REVOLUTION TO RIGHTS: AMERICA AT 250, a 10-episode podcast series from Historical Drama with The Boston Sisters® that takes you on a journey through America’s 250-year history of advancing freedom and justice since the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
GUEST
Lawrence Hill
Lawrence Hill is a writer whose eleven novels and works of non-fiction have been widely read in Canada, translated into French and many other languages, and published around the world. He is a professor of creative writing at the University of Guelph in Ontario, where he has taught and mentored developing writers for thirty years.
Hill's novels include The Illegal and The Book of Negroes (both #1 national bestsellers in Canada) and Beatrice and Croc Harry, published in English by HarperCollins Canada in 2022 and translated into French by Stanley Péan as Béatrice et Croc Harry (Mémoire d'encrier, 2024). His memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada (HarperCollins, 2001) was the first single-authored, book-length memoir on Black and white, mixed-race identity in Canada.
The Book of Negroes was adapted into a six-part TV miniseries he co-wrote, drawing millions of viewers on CBC and BET. He is currently writing a new novel about African-American soldiers who helped build the Alaska Highway in 1942–43.
Hill's awards include The Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, CBC's Canada Reads (twice), a Canadian Screen Award, an NAACP Image Award, and for Aminata (the French translation of The Book of Negroes), Le combat des livres de Radio-Canada and Le Prix Folio-Télérama des libraires 2023. His essays, including "About that word, and about those books" (Globe and Mail, 2024), have sparked national conversations on literature and censorship.
A former Globe and Mail reporter, Hill holds degrees from Université Laval and Johns Hopkins University, ten honorary doctorates, and is a Member of the Order of Canada. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario.
Connect with Lawrence Hill: Website
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Purchase Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes, and other books mentioned in this podcast from our affiliate bookstore. You’ll find that and other related titles about the historic quest for freedom for all people in the U.S. on the REVOLUTION TO RIGHTS bookshelf.
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THE BOOK OF NEGROES
THE BOOK OF NEGROES (2015) CBC
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s THE BOOK OF NEGROES, based on Lawrence Hill’s novel, recounts the story of the Black men and womens who took their chance to gain their liberty by serving on the British side of the American Revolution.
In the 2015 internationally co-produced, six-part miniseries Aminata Diallo, played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, is kidnapped from Africa and sold into slavery in the southern United States. After the American Revolution, she makes her way to Halifax and, finally, to England at the turn of the 19th century. But for Aminata and other formatly enslaved Africans, true freedom doesn’t come solely from words on paper.
THE BOOK OF NEGROES miniseries also features Academy Award-winning actor Louis Gossett Jr who plays Daddy Moses, an African American slave who helped lead a band of runaway slaves to freedom; and Cuba Gooding Jr as Sam Fraunces, a freed slave from Jamaica who runs a tavern in New York.
The series premiere in Canada in January 7, 2015, and the U.S. on BET the following month (February 2015).
The Book of Negroes: From Ledger to Legend
In 1783, as the British withdrew from New York at the close of the American Revolution, a clerk began recording names in a ledger. It would come to be called The Book of Negroes — a document listing over 3,000 Black Loyalists who had gambled everything, fighting alongside the British in exchange for a promise of freedom, and were now bound for Nova Scotia.
The 1783 British Book of Negroes ledger
Lawrence Hill discovered this 18th-century ledger and was captivated by the lives hidden behind its entries. It inspired him to write the novel bearing the same name: The Book of Negroes. Hill's story follows Aminata Diallo, a woman born in a West African village who is captured and sold into slavery in the American colonies. She allies herself with the British Crown for the promise of liberty, a decision that carries her from New York to Nova Scotia and beyond.
Aminata is a fictional creation, but her journey mirrors the real life of a man whose name appears in the actual ledger: Harry Washington.
Harry Washington's Story
Born around 1740 near the Gambia River in West Africa, Harry Washington was enslaved and purchased in 1763 by George Washington, along with three other captive Africans, from a Virginia plantation owner. During the Revolution, Harry self-emancipated and joined Lord Dunmore's "Ethiopian Regiment," fighting for the British in exchange for freedom.
His name — along with those of fellow Black Loyalists Boston King, Thomas Peters, Stephen Blucke, and David George — was recorded in the ledger when he arrived in Nova Scotia in 1783. But freedom there proved harsh. Facing brutal conditions and broken promises, Harry Washington and others eventually joined a new endeavor: settling a colony in Sierra Leone, West Africa — carrying the search for freedom full circle, back to the continent where it began.
Declarations: Black Americans and the American Revolution, a documentary by Stacey Holman, tells Harry Washington’s and other Black freedom seekers’ stories from the American Revolution. The documentary premiered on PBS June 29, 2026.
