Dr. James Walker will be at the Black Loyalist Heritage Centre on May 11th at 7pm to kick off the Journey Back to Birchtown 1st Anniversary Lecture Series. He will deliver a talk on “From the Black Loyalists to the Black Panthers: A Circular History”.
Dr. James W. St. G (Jim) Walker is Professor of History at the University of Waterloo, specializing in African-Canadian history and the history of human rights and race relations. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a former Bora Laskin National Fellow in Human Rights Research. Following his graduation from the University of Toronto Jim served as a volunteer with Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO), working for a Gandhian association in rural India. In 1965, during a student demonstration in Toronto supporting African-American voting rights, he met Rocky Jones and learned from him something about the Black community in Nova Scotia. This awareness prompted him to pursue graduate studies in history at Dalhousie University, where he did a PhD thesis on the Black Loyalists and renewed his friendship with Rocky. Jim and Rocky were among the founders of the Transition Year Program at Dalhousie, and both of them taught in that program. They often jointly worked on Rocky’s speeches, and together they spoke at high schools and later universities and international conferences on issues relating to African-Nova Scotian history. With George Elliott Clarke, Jim and Rocky conducted a series of almost 100 hours recorded discussions relating to Rocky’s life and community contributions. Jim has fashioned those discussions into a book, Burnley “Rocky” Jones, Revolutionary. An autobiography by B.A. “Rocky” Jones and James W. St. G. Walker. It will be published by Fernwood Press later this summer.