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COMMENTARY: Black History Month and birds flying free

Editor’s Note: This is the second of two parts written by Stella Shepard exclusively for The Guardian in recognition of Black History Month. The first part was published Feb. 14. Read Part 1 here: COMMENTARY: A lost chapter of Black history on Prince Edward Island.

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An enslaved old woman sat outside the rough shack where she had been born and forced to work her entire life. The day had been long, the sun merciless, the fields tearing her hands as she pulled weeds and gathered stones from the rocky soil.

She had already endured the sale of her children and her husband, a family broken apart by men who claimed the right to own them. Now, as she watched a circle of birds flying above, tears smeared on her face. A small child, too young to grasp the cruelty around him, asked why she was crying. The woman whispered the only truth she could manage: Birds fly free.

Suffering shaped the Island

The woman in that story could have been any one of the ancestors, including my own, trafficked to Prince Edward Island during the slavery era. Their suffering shaped Island communities. Learning this history is not about guilt; it is about understanding the foundations of our province and recognizing the people who helped build it.

Their stories include enslaved people such as David and Kesiah Sheppard, Samuel Martin and Maria Sickles, individuals whose lives influenced the Island long before their names were recorded.

Much of Prince Edward Island’s Black history was minimized or erased, and the fragments that survived were shaped through a European lens. Reclaiming these stories through Black perspectives is........

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