Gertrude Mossell (here in a portrait with her daughters c. 1890) was a journalist & educator. Her great grandfather, Cyrus Bustill, served with Washington’s troops during the American Revolution & helped found Philadelphia’s Free African Society. Her sister was Paul Robeson’s mother.

During the American Revolution, Cuffee Saunders (born in Guyana) was an enslaved medical assistant who served with the Patriots. He treated the wounded & purchased his freedom with his enlistment bounty. His son, Prince Saunders (pictured), a Dartmouth grad, was Haiti's attorney general.

Austin Curtis an enslaved jockey whom E. Hotaling calls the US’s “1st truly great professional athlete” was granted freedom after hiding horses from the British during the American Revolution. NC legislature added his former owner's surname in his emancipation record hence "Austin Jones" in his obit

Lemuel Haynes was a Revolutionary War veteran & the 1st Black (mixed-race) man to be ordained as a minister in the US. He argued for universal rights in his 1776 antislavery tract, Liberty Further Extended, challenging the pretense of a nation fighting for its own freedom while denying it to others.

In 1770 Crispus Attucks was the 1st martyr of the American Revolution. Son of an African father & Native American mother, he'd liberated himself from slavery & joined the multiracial ranks of northeastern mariners b4 sacrificing his life, as G.W. Williams put it, “on the altar of a people’s rights.”

John Trumbull painted this portrait of George Washington & William Lee from memory around 1780, roughly 5 years after Trumbull had served as an aide-de-camp. William Lee was a mixed-race equestrian & valet who accompanied & assisted Washington throughout the American Revolutionary War.

Black soldiers sought freedom through various means during the American Revolution. Hundreds, many of whom were self-liberated, joined the Hessian armies. About 70 of these Black American soldiers settled in Germany after the war, transforming themselves “from slaves to subjects.”

In the wake of the American Revolution, Virginia passed manumission acts which acknowledged that enslaved veterans of the Patriot army “contributed toward the establishment of American liberty and independence.” AMERICAN FOUNDERS: How People of African Descent Established Freedom in the New World

"Enslaved women’s desire for freedom did not originate with the American Revolution. However, the Revolution amplified their quest for freedom" www.cambridge.org/core/books/r...

"The labor of enslaved women helped sustain the households, farms, and local economies that made the American Revolution possible, even as those women were denied the liberty the revolution promised," the lecture 'Bearing the Nation' explains riverheadlocal.com/2026/06/24/e... #americaat250

"When we think of the man who drafted the Declaration, we need also to picture Robert Hemmings, Jefferson’s literate, teenage, enslaved valet who fetched the paper & mixed the ink... he too was a founder who worked to make the Declaration’s promises tangible & true." www.nytimes.com/2026/06/22/m...

Isaac 65, son Charles 40, daughter Nelly 38. Henny 13, Cecilia 8, Ruth 6. Patrick 35, his wife Letty 30, Cornelius 13, Francis 12, Susan 10, Gabriel 8, Peter 5, Jackson 3, Elizabeth 1, James 28, Delia 22, Susan 3, George 1, Isaac 26, his wife Kitty 28, Austin 6, Isaac 4, Elias 1. & 248 more people.

José Andrade, born in Uruguay in 1901 (his father had freed himself from enslavement in Brazil) brought Uruguay’s national soccer team to prominence in the 1920s & "put football on the map of international sports" according to one historian. He won 2 Olympic gold medals & the 1st FIFA World Cup.

Good #America250 story. You can read James Lafayette's petition for freedom here. www.lva.virginia.gov/collections/...

During the American Revolution, James Armistead La Fayette gathered intelligence from British troops that enabled the Patriot victory at Yorktown. Having risked his life - among thousands of Black Patriots - for the establishment of the United States, he petitioned for his freedom which was granted.

Matilda Sissieretta Jones (b. 1868 in Virginia) was a renowned opera singer who performed at the White House (multiple times), at Madison Square Garden (with Antonin Dvorak), headlined at Carnegie Hall in 1893, & toured the Caribbean, South America, & England.

Mary Silvinia Burghardt Du Bois, with her sister and infant son William - aka W. E. B. Du Bois. The Burghardts descended from a formerly enslaved ancestor who fought in the American Revolution.

The book “lays a historical understanding for the Black freedom struggles of the 1950s-60s. That moral revolution of the US becomes comprehensible in a new way bc we understand just how deep the roots extend into the history of the nation, the continent, & the world” www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSG7...

According to David Blight’s 2001 book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, a commemoration organized by freed slaves and some white missionaries took place on May 1, 1865, in Charleston, S.C., at a former planters’ racetrack time.com/5836444/blac...

Again, please share. In every aspect of American history you will run smack dab into the critical contributions of Black people. It’s not Black history. It’s American history. Trying to erase it is a fool’s errand. We live it every day. time.com/5836444/blac...

Historian of slavery here the Pope is single handedly showing us the best of America in these very troubling times and needed on the 250th of the republic, to see the virtues that made the U.S. admired all over the world, the ability to admit a mistake. apnews.com/article/pope...

Reverend George Washington Henderson, theologian, professor, principal (b. 1850 in Virginia, enslaved) graduated University of Vermont as valedictorian in 1877, was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, & attended Yale. In 1894 he wrote "1st Memorial Against Lynching" addressed to the Louisiana legislature.

Nannie Helen Burroughs, educator, entrepreneur, advocate of women’s rights, daughter of formerly enslaved parents, founded a school in Washington DC in 1901. She observed, “Education & justice are democracy’s only life insurance.”

On this day in 1955, Mary McLeod Bethune died. She founded Bethune-Cookman College and spent a lifetime advocating for civil rights. Bethune left an amazing last will & testament, leaving “love,” “hope,” “a thirst for education,” and “respect for the uses of power.” www.cookman.edu/history/last...

Lemuel Haynes was a Revolutionary War veteran & the 1st Black (mixed-race) man to be ordained as a minister in the US. He argued for universal rights in his 1776 antislavery tract, Liberty Further Extended, challenging the pretense of a nation fighting for its own freedom while denying it to others.

Wifredo Lam (pictured right) was a widely celebrated 20th century artist. An Afro-Cuban painter of Chinese & Congolese ancestry, a descendant of slavery, a colleague of Pablo Picasso (pictured left), Henri Matisse, & Frida Kahlo, Lam viewed his world-renowned work as “an act of decolonization.”

In 1855 Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole went to the Crimean Peninsula to care for soldiers in wartime. She & Florence Nightingale were honored in London for their service. Seacole wrote "I am proud of [my] relationship to those poor mortals whom you once held enslaved & whose bodies America still owns."

In the 1890s Fannie Barrier Williams founded a hospital, cofounded the National Association for Colored Women, served on the Chicago Public Library board & in the Chicago Women's Club (despite threats). A champion of voting rights, she was asked to eulogize Susan B. Anthony.

Portrait of the Artist's Mother by Henry Ossawa Tanner 1897. Sarah Tanner was the matriarch of an accomplished African American family including her husband, Bishop Benjamin Tanner, daughter Dr. Halle Tanner (1st woman licensed to practice medicine in AL) & son, renowned painter Henry Ossawa Tanner

In 1841 Mary Richardson married John Jones of North Carolina. They carried free papers when they settled in Chicago & Mr. Jones established a successful tailoring business. Active in abolitionist politics & voting rights campaigns, they hosted & dressed John Brown & crew en route to Harper’s Ferry.

Congressman Robert B. Elliot repeatedly put his own life at risk in his efforts to enact measures to litigate & suppress Klan terrorism. As a newspaper editor & then as a statesman he advocated fairness in courts, voting practices, schools, & public accommodations, & sought federal aid for schools.

Octavius Catto was a scholar, a National Guard officer, & a champion of education, baseball, & voting rights. He was slain by white rioters targeting Black voters in Philadelphia on Election Day 1871. His body was laid in state & his funeral was the city's largest since Lincoln's.

Jose Manuel Valdez was Peru’s highest ranked physician in 1835. Black doctors like him & others were “part of the scientific revolution that overtook the medical profession in Peru in the 2nd half of the 18C.” They pioneered public health & immunization programs that spurred Peru's economic growth.

Jarena Lee, b. 1783, preacher & women’s rights pioneer. She was an American Antislavery Society member & published an autobiography in 1836. Lee observed, “Why should it be thought impossible, heterodox, or improper for a woman to preach, seeing as the Savior died for the woman as well as the man?”

"In the early 1900s, a combination of big money, violence by white jockeys, & intimidation from the Klan was forcing the great African-American jockeys from racing." Winkfield then raced throughout Europe & won nearly every marquee race on the continent. www.americasbestracing.net/the-sport/20...

Since the dawn of US, enslaved people cared for, trained & raced horses & attended races. Anne Ritson observed in VA c. 1800 “From ev’ry quarter they can come/With gentle, simple, rich, & poor/The race-ground soon is covered o’er/Males, females, all, both black & white/Together at this sport unite.”

Austin Curtis Jones, an enslaved & extremely successful jockey, whom Edward Hotaling calls the US’s “1st truly great professional athlete” was granted freedom after hiding horses from British troops during the American Revolution.

Isaac Murphy, son of a formerly enslaved father who died fighting for the Union during the Civil War, was the 1st jockey to win 3 Kentucky Derbies in 1884, 1890, & 1891 & among the greatest jockeys in history. He won 44 percent of all the races he rode, a record still unmatched.

On left (standing) renowned trainer Ansel Williamson & champion jockey Edward Brown (below) both of whom were formerly enslaved. Brown “achieved great fame for his prowess as a jockey & following the Civil War became a respected trainer & owner of several Kentucky Derby winners.”

In 1875 Oliver Lewis won the first Kentucky Derby. Black jockeys won 15 of the first 28 Kentucky Derbies. In 2010 the Newtown Pike Extension in Lexington, Kentucky was named the Oliver Lewis Way.

"In the early 1900s, a combination of big money, violence by white jockeys, & intimidation from the Klan was forcing the great African-American jockeys from racing." Winkfield then raced throughout Europe & won nearly every marquee race on the continent. www.americasbestracing.net/the-sport/20...

Eliza Carpenter, born in Virginia in 1849, enslaved, ultimately owned her own stables where she bought, trained, & rode race horses. The Baltimore Afro-American newspaper mourned her passing & celebrated her extraordinary equestrian prowess in 1924.

Since the dawn of US, enslaved people cared for, trained & raced horses & attended races. Anne Ritson observed in VA c. 1800 “From ev’ry quarter they can come/With gentle, simple, rich, & poor/The race-ground soon is covered o’er/Males, females, all, both black & white/Together at this sport unite.”

Austin Curtis Jones, an enslaved & extremely successful jockey, whom Edward Hotaling calls the US’s “1st truly great professional athlete” was granted freedom after hiding horses from British troops during the American Revolution.

Isaac Murphy, son of a formerly enslaved father who died fighting for the Union during the Civil War, was the 1st jockey to win 3 Kentucky Derbies in 1884, 1890, & 1891 & among the greatest jockeys in history. He won 44 percent of all the races he rode, a record still unmatched.

When the Kentucky Derby was established in 1875, 13 of the 15 riders were Black. Black jockeys won 15 of the first 28 Derbies. Oscar Lewis, a 19-year-old rider from Kentucky, was the 1st jockey to win the Derby, riding a horse trained by formerly enslaved, renowned horseman Ansel Williamson.

On left (standing) renowned trainer Ansel Williamson & champion jockey Edward Brown (below) both of whom were formerly enslaved. Brown “achieved great fame for his prowess as a jockey & following the Civil War became a respected trainer & owner of several Kentucky Derby winners.”

On left (standing) renowned trainer Ansel Williamson & champion jockey Edward Brown (below) both of whom were formerly enslaved. Brown “achieved great fame for his prowess as a jockey & following the Civil War became a respected trainer & owner of several Kentucky Derby winners.”