Wm. C. Nell's
"The Colored Patriots
of the Revolution"

Famous Afro-Americans
in the American
Revolutionary War

Black Heritage Trail

As I walk the Black Heritage Trail through Boston's Beacon Hill area, a famous quote enters my head. "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal." YES! A fantastic message, isn't it? This idea, penned into the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson and our "founding fathers," rings with justice and liberty. The words cry out against one man's domination by another, against unfair government that does not represent the people, against advantages of the wealthy over the poor. What a truly fabulous idea... but what a terribly disappointing reality. I am learning about the history of blacks in Revolutionary America. Their stories of endless struggle are told through the brick houses and bronze plaques standing before me. These people were not treated as "equals," as the Declaration claims. At each stop on the Heritage Trail, I tell myself that our "fathers" had the right words, just not the right deeds. It turns out that "all" of the "men" that Jefferson was talking about really wasn't "all," at all. In fact, Jefferson's truth didn't include most of the people that were living in the American colonies at the time. All sorts of humans were considered to be property then, which kept these lower classes from having equal rights with the white, landowning men in power. Women, indentured servants, native Americans, and blacks (enslaved AND free) were not granted equal rights before, during, or well after the American Revolution. This inequality certainly presents a problem to us today, as we look back on the war based on "liberation" from the colonial enslavement under an unfair British government. How could men who were so passionate about their freedom, justify withholding that very freedom from so many other groups of people? When you consider the mindset 250 years ago, you realize that most white males simply didn't think about that.

Fortunately though, William Nell did think about it and did what he could to change it. At the African Meeting House on the Black Heritage Trail, I learned that William Nell was born a free black in Boston, Massachusetts. However, just because he was free didn't mean that he was given the same rights as free white men in the city. When William won a prestigious academic award as a young man at school, he was not invited or allowed to attend the awards ceremony at Faneiul Hall to receive his certificate. That ceremony was reserved for the white students only. The only way he was able to get in, was to dress up as a waiter, and serve dinner to those at the banquet who should have been applauding him! This stinging inequality motivated Nell's life work. Although he studied to become a lawyer, he would not apply to the bar because he would not "take an oath to a constitution that did not recognize the rights of slaves." He would become a constant voice in the movement to end school segregation. He worked for "the day when color of skin would be no barrier to equal school rights." His efforts were rewarded in 1855 when black children in Massachusetts were finally allowed to attend the public schools closest to their homes, not forced to a "black school," perhaps blocks away.

Nell is best remembered, though, for not letting other blacks be forgotten. He knew that black colonists and slaves had played huge roles in securing American independence from Britain during the Revolutionary War. Unfortunately, just as his scholastic achievement had gone unrecognized because of the color of his skin, so too did the wartime achievements of blacks in America go "overlooked" by historians after the muskets ceased fire. Nell felt that their efforts should be memorialized alongside the white soldiers who were celebrated as heroes in text books, statues, and speeches. Because other historians of the time weren't interested, in 1850, he wrote a book documenting his race's contribution called "The Colored Patriots of the Revolution." It was Nell's attempt at rescuing the heroic stories of African-Americans "from oblivion."

Five thousand black slaves and freed men voluntarily fought and died for America to win its independence from England. This number is amazing, especially when you realize that these men were fighting for a land "which did not acknowledge them as citizens and equals." Harriet Beecher Stowe, an abolitionist author, introduced Nell's book with her admiration of the black soldiers:

It was not for their own land they fought, nor even for a land which had adopted them, but for a land which had enslaved them, and whose laws, even in freedom, oftener oppressed than protected. Bravery, under such circumstances, has a peculiar beauty and merit.