Directed by Sylvia Hamilton • 2016 • Canada • 21'

Thomas Peters (c. 1738–1792) escaped enslavement in North Carolina to fight for the British during the American Revolutionary War. Following the war, he became a prominent leader and influential spokesperson for Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

A West African-born Yoruba man, Peters escaped enslavement on a North Carolina plantation in 1776. He joined the Black Pioneers in New York and rose to the rank of sergeant while fighting on the side of Britain during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). After the war, Peters, along with his wife and children, were among the estimated 3,500 Black Loyalists that the British evacuated to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Peters became a prominent leader and influential spokesperson for the Black Loyalists who were frustrated and deceived about the conditions of their postwar resettlement in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Peters fought tirelessly to get British officials to fulfill promises made to Black Loyalists, eventually travelling to London, England, to make an impassioned appeal for justice, racial equality, and land. While in London, he learned that the Sierra Leone Company was looking to establish a permanent settlement of formerly enslaved people of African descent from the Americas. Peters recruited roughly one-third of the estimated 1,196 people of African descent who relocated to Sierra Leone and founded the settlement of Freetown. There, he continued to advocate for land, liberty, and self-rule until his death in 1792.

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