Cotton Mather, a White minister, began an evening school for Indians and Blacks in Boston, Massachusetts.

The South Sea Company of England was authorized to import 144,000 enslaved Africans to the Americas (4,800 per year) for the next thirty years.

Between 1718 and 1727 slightly over 11,000 Africans were imported to Virginia in 76 vessels. Only six of those vessels were originally from Virginia; they carried a total of 649 enslaved Africans. The remaining 70 ships, carrying 10,442 Africans, were from Bristol, Liverpool, and London.

The enslaved population of the Pennsylvania colony was estimated at 2,000.

Blacks received instruction in New Orleans, Louisiana, from the Roman Catholic Ursuline Nuns.

Nathaniel Pigott announced his plans to begin a school for the "instruction of Negroes in reading, catechizing, and writing."

Colonial Massachusetts forbade enslaved Black, Indian, and mixed-raced people or servants from buying provisions directly from country people. It was permissible for the enslaved to request their mistress or master to make the sale. Violators were fined five shillings.

The colony of Rhode Island required every enslaver to post a bond of one hundred pounds to guarantee that each freed enslaved person would not become a public charge "through sickness, lameness" or other cause.

The Connecticut colony passes a law forbidding any enslaved Black, Indian, or mixed-race from slandering or libeling a white person. If convicted by a justice of the peace, the accused was whipped with forty lashes.

Benjamin Banneker was born in Ellicott, Maryland, the grandson of a white woman. He secured a modest education from a school for free Blacks near Joppa, Maryland, but received assistance in his study of science from George Ellicott, a Maryland Quaker, planter, and philanthropist. As a youth, Banneker made a wooden clock which is said to have remained accurate throughout his lifetime. Between 1791 and 1802, Banneker published a yearly almanac, which was widely read, and was also the first Black man to publish astronomical materials in the United States. His other publications included a treatise on bees. Banneker is also credited with computing the cycle of the seventeen-year locust. In 1791, Banneker was appointed upon the recommendation of Thomas Jefferson to serve as a member of a commission to survey plans for Washington, D.C. That August, he wrote a famous letter to Jefferson appealing for a more liberal attitude toward Black Americans, using his own work as evidence of Black American intellectual equality. Banneker said in part, "I apprehend you will embrace every opportunity to eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas and opinions which so generally prevail with respect to Blacks; and that your sentiments are concurrent with mine which are: that one universal Father hath given being to us all; that He not only made us all of one flesh, but that He had also without partiality afforded us all with these same faculties and that, however diversified in situation or color, we are all the same family and stand in the same relation to Him." Jefferson accepted, then later rejected, the notion of Black American mental equality and even entertained doubts about Banneker's intellectual capabilities.

The British parliament sent all of the colonial governors, including Jonathan Belcher, governor of Massachusetts, a directive stating: "Whereas Acts have been passed in some of our plantations in America for laying duties on the importation and exportation of Blacks to the discouragement of the Merchants trading thither from the Coast of Africa, it is our will and pleasure that you do not give your assent to or pass any law imposing duties upon Blacks imported into our province of the Massachusetts Bay payable by the importer or upon any enslaved Blacks exported that have not been sold in our said province, and continued there for the space of twelve months."

In the Danish West Indies (now St. John, United States Virgin Islands) this revolt started when 150 enslaved Africans from present-day Ghana, revolted against the owners and managers of the island's plantations. This rebellion was one of the earliest and longest enslaved Black revolts in the Americas. Enslaved Akwamu people captured the fort in Coral Bay and took control of most of the island. They intended to resume crop production under their own control and use Africans of other tribes as slave labor. Planters regained control by the end of May 1734, after the Akwamu were defeated by several hundred better-armed French and Swiss troops sent in April from Martinique, a French colony. Colony militia continued to hunt down maroons and finally declared the rebellion at an end in late August 1734.

The Georgia colony board, a governing entity, passed an act for rendering the colony of Georgia more defensible by prohibiting the importation and use of enslaved Blacks into the same region. At the time, it was believed that Georgia would serve as a barrier against the Spanish. In an effort to circumvent the ban, many Georgia residents hired enslaved Blacks from South Carolina. On January 1, 1750, after many of the settlers demonstrated through petitions, the ban against the importation of enslaved Blacks was lifted.

The Stono Rebellion, often referred to as Cato's Conspiracy or Cato's Rebellion was a Black uprising that had its start in South Carolina's colony on September 9, 1739. The Southern Colonial empires' biggest Black uprising resulted in the deaths of 25 colonists and 35 to 50 Africans. As the rebels were Catholic and several spoke Portuguese, it is likely that they were from the Central African Kingdom of Kongo. Jemmy, the insurrection's commander, was an educated enslaved African. However, he is sometimes known as "Cato" and was probably enslaved by the Cato (or Cater) family, who resided north of the Stono River and close to the Ashley River. They were headed for Spanish Florida, where numerous declarations had offered fleeing Blacks from British North America. Before being stopped and routed by the South Carolina troops close to the Edisto River, Jemmy and his band recruited approximately 60 additional enslaved Africans and killed over 20 white people. After another 30 miles (50 km) of travel, the militia was finally routed a week later. The few remaining Blacks were sold into marketplaces in the West Indies; the majority of the captured enslaved Africans were put to death. The General Assembly established the Negro Act of 1740 in response to the uprising, which limited slaves' freedoms while enhancing working conditions and putting a stop to the importation of additional slaves.

In response to the Stono Rebellion, the largest Black uprising in the British mainland colonies, South Carolina passes the Negro Act of 1740, which made it illegal for enslaved Blacks to move abroad, assemble in groups, raise food, earn money and learn to write English, similar to New York’s 1708 Act for Preventing the Conspiracy of Slaves law. It also enacted a 10-year moratorium against importing enslaved Africans, because they were considered more rebellious, and established penalties against slaveholders' harsh treatment of enslaved Africans. It required legislative approval for each act of manumission, which slaveholders had previously been able to arrange privately. This sharply reduced the rate of manumissions in the state.

A Negro conspiracy was charged with a series of fires in New York. New Yorkers blamed Roman Catholic priests for inciting the enslaved to burn the town on orders from Spain. Eighteen Blacks and four Whites were hanged December 31, 1741, and thirteen Blacks were burned at the stake.

An enslaved Black man named Boston petitioned the General Court of Massachusetts for a divorce from his wife, Hagar. She was charged with "not having the fear of God before her eyes...being instigated by a White...and is found guilty of the detestable sin of adultery...and during the time of intermarriage, she delivered of a Mulatto bastard." The court granted Boston a divorce.

Gustavus Vassa was born and name as Olaudah Equiano in Nigeria. Vassa enjoyed a childhood filled with tribal unity. At the age of ten, he was kidnapped by nearby tribesmen and sold into slavery. He was brought to Virginia where he was purchased by a British sailor, Michael Pacal, who took him to England. There he began his formal education and was given the name Gustavus Vassa, after the sixteenth-century Swedish king. He traveled with his enslaver across the seas, witnessing fighting between the French and the British. He was further educated in London and was baptized in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, in February 1759. When Vassa requested freedom, his enslaver angrily sent him to the West Indies to be sold. Vassa's new enslaver was a Philadelphia Quaker who taught him commercial arts. Vassa bought his freedom in 1766 and earned his living trading goods from the Caribbean. His interest in abolition was aroused by his exposure to the slave trade and inspired his autobiography, "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano." Vassa died in 1794.

At age sixteen, Lucy Terry Prince wrote "The Bar's Fight," a poem about an Indian attack on Deerfield, Massachusetts, where she was enslaved. The poem wasn't published until 1855, in Josiah Gilbert Holland's history of western Massachusetts. Prince is considered by some to be the first Black American female poet, though Phillis Wheatley published work in 1776. Born in Africa, Prince was kidnapped as a child and brought to Deerfield, where she became enslaved to Ebenezer Wells. Prince was married in 1756 to Abijah Prince, a free man who bought his wife's freedom. Prince's past probably inspired her civil rights efforts. She succeeded in convincing the governor's council of Guilford, Vermont, where she was living, to order the protection of her family after their fence had been torn down by white neighbors. She also tried, but failed, to get one of her sons enrolled in Williams College. In 1821, Prince died on the family farm in Sunderland.

George Liele was born to enslaved parents in Virginia. He was introduced to the Baptist faith by a white minister in Burke County, Georgia, who preached to the enslaved. During Britain's occupation of Savannah, Liele began preaching to Black Baptists, and when the British sailed from Savannah to Jamaica, Liele accompanied them as an indentured servant. In Jamaica, Liele began preaching in a private home but eventually was permitted to expand his ministry to rural areas, much to the dismay of the Anglican church. Liele built a church and a public school and worked as a farmer and hauler of goods. In 1820 he died in Jamaica and was buried there; he left a wife and four children.

The colony of Georgia authorized the importation of enslaved persons. The law required a ratio of four enslaved males for each white servant. It also required that Blacks be tried according to the laws of England and that the enslaved be taught the sanctity of marriage. The law also prohibited intermarriage of Blacks and Whites.

Oliver Cromwell was reportedly born free in Columbus, Burlington County, New Jersey in 1752. He worked as a farmer before joining the 2nd New Jersey regiment under the command of Colonel Israel Shreve. Cromwell recalled that he accompanied General George Washington when he crossed the Delaware in 1776 and also claimed to have fought in the battles of Princeton, Brandywine, Monmouth, and Yorktown. He received an honorable discharge from the Jersey Battalion which was signed by General Washington at his headquarters on June 5, 1783. Cromwell received a federal pension of ninety-six dollars a year. He died in January 1853.

John Marrant was born in New York. He lived in St. Augustine, Florida, for a time before being captured by Cherokee Indians. Marrant was influenced by the reverend George Whitefield, an English preacher who co-founded, with John Wesley, the Methodist Movement. He served with the British Royal Navy and was a Methodist missionary in Nova Scotia before becoming an author. His writings detailed the events of his own life that led him to his religious convictions. His most popular work, "A Narrative of The Lord's Wonderful Dealings with John Marrant," describes Marrant's "dealings" with God. Historian Arthur Schomburg reprinted Marrant's masonic sermon in 1789 and described him as undoubtedly one of the first, if not the first, Black minister of the gospel in North America. Marrant rarely referred to racial matters in his works and thus was never cited in early collected works of African American biographies. He died in 1791.

Agrippa Hull was born free in Northampton, Massachusetts. Hull enlisted as a private in the brigade of the Massachusetts line on May 1, 1777, where he served for the duration of the revolutionary war. He served his first two years as a private and the next four years as an orderly for General Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the Polish patriot. Hull received his discharge (signed by General George Washington) in July 1783 at West Point. Kosciuszko later met with Hull in New York when the General visited the United States in 1797. Hull married a fugitive enslaved woman, adopted another enslaved fugitive, and farmed a plot of land in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. He died in 1848.

Joseph Ranger was born in Northumberland County, Virginia. Ranger was aboard the Jefferson when the British blew it up. He also served on the Hero, the Dragon, and the Patriot during the American Revolution. Ranger was part of the captured patriot crew that was held by the British until the surrender at Yorktown. He served on the Patriot and the Liberator in the years following the revolution. He reportedly received the benefits of the Federal Pension Act of 1832, an annual payment of $96 and 100 acres of land.

James Lafayette Armistead was born enslaved to William Armistead of New Kent County, Virginia. In March 1781, Armistead was granted permission to serve with General Lafayette during the Revolutionary War and infiltrated the headquarters of British general Charles Cornwallis. Armistead was noted for his written intelligence reports concerning the Yorktown campaign that ended the Revolutionary War. Lafayette gave Armistead a certificate stating: "This is to certify that the bearer by the name of James had done essential services to me while I had the honor to command in this State. His intelligences from the enemy's camp were industriously collected and more faithfully delivered. He properly acquitted himself with some important communications I gave him and appears to be entitled to every reward his situation can admit of. Done under my hand, Richmond, November 21st, 1784. LaFayette." As a reward for his services, Armistead was granted his freedom by the Virginia legislature in 1786. Thirty years later, he purchased forty acres of land near New Kent County and raised a family. He was granted an annual pension of $40 in 1819, and in 1824 was personally greeted by General Lafayette upon the General's return to America. Armistead died in 1832.

Austin Dabney is believed to have been born to a Virginia white woman and a Black father in North Carolina. Dabney was enlisted in the Georgia Militia by Richard Aycock. In February 1779, Dabney fought along with white men in the name of colonial independence. He was wounded in battle, ending his military career. Dabney was emancipated in 1786 by the Georgia legislature, and in 1821 he was granted 112 acres of choice farmland in Walton County. His prosperity grew from owning horses during the later years of his life. Dabney was, according to some, Georgia's only genuine Black hero of the American Revolutionary War. Dabney died in Zebulon, GA in 1834.

Jupiter Hammon, born enslaved October 17, 1711, published Salvation by Christ with Penitential Cries, the first known poetical work by a Black American. Hammon's enslavers had given him a rudimentary education, including religious instruction, and helped to publish his verse. Scholars do not accord much literary merit to Hammon's work, but he is an important figure because of his place in the chronology of Black literature. Hammon is also known for his "Address to the Negroes of the State of New York" (1787), in which he called upon Blacks to be faithful and obedient to their enslavers. Hammon believed that the race should endure its bondage humbly and patiently until it earned its freedom by honest and good conduct.

Between 1753 and 1763, thirteen New England vessels brought 869 enslaved people to Virginia.

Brown University was founded in Providence, Rhode Island. The university was named for the wealthy New England shippers, the Brown Brothers, who made substantial profits from the African slave trade.

Virginia farmer and future president George Washington sent an unruly slave to the West Indies in exchange for rum and other commodities.

Peter Hill was born into an enslaved family in a New Jersey Quaker household where he learned the craft of clock making from his enslaver. He worked in his enslaver's clock shop until age 27, when he was manumitted. Hill received his manumission document May 1, 1795. On September 9, 1795, Hill married Tina Lewis, a free woman of color. Hill went on to open clock shops of his own in Burlington Township and Mount Holly, New Jersey. Two of Hill's tall case clocks are known to still be in existence: one in Westtown elementary school, the other in the National Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Hill died in 1820.

When the Spanish empire expanded into coastal California in 1769, the large population of Spanish-speaking residents of African descent was influential to the occupation. The Portola expedition in particular was known to have at least one mixed-race Black soldier, Juan Antonio Coronel, and several mule drivers of Spanish African heritage.

Quaker philanthropist Anthony Benezet establishes a free school for Blacks in Philadelphia. In 1784, when Benezet died, he left his fortune to the school known as the Binoxide House.

Crispus Attucks of Framingham, Massachusetts, an escaped enslaved Black man, died with four other Americans in the Boston Massacre. He was in the forefront of the group that taunted British soldiers during the altercation and reportedly was the first to fall from their fire. Massachusetts later honored Attucks with a statue in Boston. Attucks was born enslaved to Deacon William Brown in Framingham. In November 1750, he escaped slavery, at the age of 27. In Boston, Black Americans held an annual Crispus Attucks Day from 1858 to 1870.

In Savannah, Georgia, George Liele and Andrew Bryan organized the American colonies' first Black Baptist Church. Liele and Bryan were both former enslaved Blacks with modest education. When they first began preaching (at very young ages) there were no Black denominations. Liele and Bryan preached without compensation. Liele supported himself as a laborer-for-hire after being freed by his pious master. Opposition to Black worship eventually forced Liele to flee to Jamaica. Bryan's enslaver defended him against other whites who were alarmed over the growth of the Black church, and although Bryan bought his wife's freedom, he did not purchase his own until after his enslaver's death because of the sense of gratitude Bryan had for his enslaver's support of him.

Phillis Wheatley, an African-born poet, published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, becoming the second American woman to publish a book. Wheatley was born in Senegal, circa 1753, and was sold as an enslaved Black girl in 1761 to Boston tailor John Wheatley, whose wife tutored young Phillis, enabling her to become literate. Wheatley began writing verses in her early teens. Manumitted in 1773, she traveled to London and was received by the Lord Mayor and other influential Londoners. On February 28, 1776, Wheatley had an audience with General George Washington at his Cambridge, Massachusetts headquarters, so that he could express his appreciation for her poem in his honor.

Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, the first permanent settler of Chicago, purchased the property of Jean Baptiste Millet at Old Peoria Fort. Du Sable was born in St. Marc, Haiti, in 1745, the son of a Frenchman who had emigrated to Haiti from Marseilles, France, and a Black enslaved woman. Du Sable was educated in France and later worked in his father's business in New Orleans in 1765. When the Spanish occupied Louisiana that same year, Du Sable and an associate, Jacques Clemorgan of Martinique, left for the French-settled areas of the upper Mississippi River. They stopped in St. Louis, where they carried on a successful fur trade with the Indians for two years. Later, Du Sable and Clemorgan moved farther north into Indian territory and lived with the Peoria and Potawatomie tribes. At the same time, Du Sable participated in fur trapping expeditions, which carried him to the present sites of Chicago, Detroit, and Ontario, Canada. In 1772, Du Sable decided to build a fur trading post on the Chicago River near Lake Michigan. A successful trading center grew around the post and the Chicago settlement developed. After Illinois came under the jurisdiction of the United States, Du Sable sold his property and returned to Missouri, where he died in 1818.

George Washington signed the Fairfax Resolves, barring the importation of enslaved Africans and threatening to halt all colonial exports to England.

Prince Hall and 14 other Blacks were inducted into the British army masonic lodge near Boston. This was the first formal fraternal organization of Blacks. Hall, who ministered the gospel to his group, was refuted when he asked the Massachusetts grand lodge for permission to establish a separate African lodge.

Known originally as the Pennsylvania Society for The Abolition of Slavery, this group included many active Quakers. The Society first worked toward obtaining an abolition law in Pennsylvania and protecting free Blacks from being kidnapped and sold into slavery. After a successful campaign for adequate protective legislation, the Society helped enforce the new laws through committees of correspondence and by employing lawyers to secure the conviction of offenders. The Society suspended its operations during the revolutionary war, although individual members continued active work. The group was reorganized in 1787 as "The Pennsylvania Society for "Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, the Relief of Free Blacks Unlawfully Held in Bondage, and Improving the Condition of the African Race".

Two Black men, Peter Salem and Salem Poor, were commended for their participation on the side of the patriots at the battle of Bunker Hill. Salem had been enslaved in Framington, Massachusetts, but was manumitted so that he could serve in the Revolutionary War. The Committee on safety of the continental congress had decreed in May 1775 that only free Blacks could serve in the American army. During the battle of Bunker Hill, Salem killed the British commander, Major John Pitcairn. Although the Americans did not achieve victory at Bunker Hill, Pitcarn's death raised the rebels' morale at the time. The Massachusetts general Court later commended Salem for the act. Poor also won commendation from the Massachusetts Court and from his officers. He was described by his officers as an excellent soldier. On July 9, 1775, however, general George Washington announced that there would be no further enlistments of Blacks. The Continental Congress sanctioned Washington's decree in October.

Following the announcement of general George Washington on July 9, 1775, that there would be no further enlistments of Blacks in the American army, the Continental Congress prohibits Black enlistment.

Lord Dunmore, British royal governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation promising freedom to enslaved Africans who joined the British forces in the Revolutionary War. Southerners, especially Virginians, were alarmed and angered. Virginia responded by attempting to convince Blacks that the British motives were purely selfish and promised them good treatment if they remained loyal to the Patriot cause. On December 13, 1775, a Virginia Convention promised to pardon all enslaved Blacks who returned to their enslavers within ten days. It is not clear how many enslaved Blacks served with the British, but the war did have an unsettling effect on the institution of slavery. At least 100,000 Blacks ran away from their enslavers during the conflict. The Dunmore proclamation helped to bolster Southern support for the patriots as the British threatened slavery.

Isaac Jefferson was born to Usler and George, a couple enslaved to Thomas Jefferson, at Monticello in December 1775. He accompanied Thomas Jefferson to Philadelphia in 1790, where he learned the trade of tinning. After Thomas Jefferson's death in 1826, it is believed that Isaac Jefferson was a blacksmith in Petersburg, Virginia, in 1847. In the 1840 census he was recorded as Isaac Granger. In 1951, his memories as an enslaved Black man were published in "Memoirs of a Monticello Slave, as dictated to Charles Campbell in the 1840s by Isaac, one of Thomas Jefferson's enslaved Blacks". The book is valued mainly for its information about Thomas Jefferson.

General George Washington, revising an earlier decision, ordered recruiting officers to accept free Blacks in the American army. More than 5,000 Blacks, mostly from the North, fought against the British. Georgia and South Carolina steadfastly opposed the enlistment of Black soldiers. In 1770, the Continental Congress agreed to pay owners of enslaved Blacks in Georgia and South Carolina $1,000 for each enslaved Black allowed to serve in the American army, but at the end of the war they were to be freed and given fifty dollars. The two Southern states rejected the offer.

A section that alleged that King George III had forced the slave trade and slavery on the colonies was eliminated at the insistence of representatives from Georgia and South Carolina. Thomas Jefferson had charged King George with waging a "cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither." In the monarch's determination "to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold," Jefferson said he had suppressed "every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce." Historians agree that this was one example of the American exaggerations in the list of grievances against King George III.

Prince Whipple, a native of Amabou, Africa, accompanies George Washington across the Delaware River. Though Whipple was born free, he was sold into slavery on the way to the colonies where he was sent by his parents to be educated. An 1819 painting by Thomas Sully and a later work by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze depicted a Black man as part of Washington's party. Whipple, whose surname was taken from his enslaver, regained his freedom after serving in the Revolutionary War by petitioning to the council and House of New Hampshire in 1779.

New Jersey began educating whites and Blacks separately.

British Major-General Richard Prescott was captured at his Rhode Island headquarters by American revolutionary forces. Jack Sisson was the leader of the troop that captured Prescott. Newspaper reports noted Sisson's pivotal role in the event.

James Armistead (1760 - 1832), in the service of General Lafayette, infiltrated British general Cornwallis's camp and sent vital written reports back to the Americans and French. Acting on Armistead's information, the revolutionary commanders sent a French fleet to Chesapeake Bay and forced Cornwallis's surrender. Armistead, an enslaved Black man, was given leave by his enslaver in 1781 to serve General Lafayette. For his contribution to the success of the war effort, the Virginia legislature granted him his freedom in 1786.

Known as Billy, Will, or William, the mixed-race enslaved Black man of John Tayloe of Virginia was sentenced to death by the Court of Oyer and Terminer, Prince William County, for "aiding in the seizure of an armed vessel and feloniously and traitorously waging war against Virginia." Billy argued that his part in the attack was not of his own free will. Two Justices, Henry Lee and William Carr, dissented with the court on grounds that, because Billy was enslaved, he owed no allegiance and, therefore, could not be guilty of treason. Virginia governor Thomas Jefferson moved to pass a reprieve to June 30 through the state legislature. The reprieve was apparently granted, a move that may have evidenced a sense of justice in a slave-holding state, as well as Jefferson's hypothesized anti-slavery views.

James C. Derham bought his freedom from Dr. Robert Dove, who had educated Derham in pharmacy and therapeutics. Derham went to New Orleans and set up his own successful practice treating Blacks and Whites.

Elizabeth (Mumbet) Freeman, born enslaved around 1742, escaped a physically abusive enslaver and appealed to a young lawyer, Theodore Sedgwick, to prevent re-enslavement. Freeman told the lawyer that she had overheard conversations about the Bill of Rights and the new constitution of Massachusetts, which claimed that all men were born free and equal. Sedgwick argued the case before the county court of Great Barrington, which freed Freeman and ordered her former enslaver to pay her thirty shillings in damages. Freeman died on December 28, 1829.

Signed in Paris by representatives of King George III of Great Britain and representatives of the United States of America on September 3, 1783, the treaty of Paris officially ended the American Revolutionary War. The treaty set the boundaries between the British Empire in North America and the United States of America. By this time, the US reversed their promise of enslaved militia men gaining freedom at war’s end just 2 years earlier. They now require that all property, including enslaved persons, be left in place. British military General Guy Carleton, however, kept his promise and shipped 3,000 Black Loyalist to Novia Scotia (modern day Maritime Canada), many of which left Nova Scotia to create an independent colony in Sierra Leone.

Tom Molineaux was one of four boys born enslaved, in Georgetown, district of Columbia. As a boy, Molineaux began to box, following in the footsteps of his father. His abilities as a boxer won him his freedom and a hundred-dollar prize when Molineaux defeated another enslaved Black from a nearby plantation on the bet of their enslavers. He used his prize money to go to London, where boxing was a popular and profitable sport, and he became the first American to fight with distinction abroad. Unfortunately, his success was short-lived; he lost two highly publicized matches against Tom Cribbs, the British champion. Molineaux then entered a downward spiral into poverty and alcoholism. He died penniless in Ireland on August 4, 1818.

Elleanor Eldridge was born in Warwick, Rhode Island. She began working for the Baker family at an early age, washing clothes for twenty-five cents a week. During her six years with the family, she became skilled at spinning, weaving, and arithmetic. In 1812, she and her sister began a business of weaving, washing, and soap boiling that enabled Elleanor to buy a lot and build a house, which she would later rent out. By 1822, she had saved enough from her various business ventures to build a large house. Over a period of years she added to the house and began making payments toward a second house. When Eldridge made a trip to visit relatives, it was mistakenly reported that she had died. Upon her return, all her property, valued at $4,000, had been sold. On the advice of friends, she entered a "trespass and ejectment" suit, which she won. However, she could recover her property only after payment of $2,700, which likely went unpaid. In 1838, Eldridge's memoirs were written by Frances Harriet Whipple Greene McDougall.

In Rhode Island slaves and all persons born after March, 1784 were declared free; participation in slave trade was forbidden in 1787.

Sally Hemings was believed to have captured the heart of Thomas Jefferson, who at the time was a forty-five-year-old widower. Born in 1773, Hemings had arrived at Jefferson's Monticello plantation in 1775 as an enslaved woman. She accompanied his daughter to join him in France and was apparently educated and financially compensated during the three-year stay. Soon after she returned to Monticello, in 1789, Hemings gave birth to a son. Writings by Jefferson, Hemings's children, and Virginia's Richmond Recorder evidenced their intimate relationship and Jefferson's paternity to this and probably six other of Hemings's children. Hemings was discreetly freed by Jefferson's daughter after his death in 1826. Hemmings died in 1835.

The Manumission Society established the New York African Free School, where enrollment averaged about 50 students. Another school for Black Americans was built in Philadelphia, and six more were established in the next ten years.

Moses Sash was indicted for taking up arms against the Commonwealth and encouraging others to do the same, according to a Suffolk County, Massachusetts, courthouse document. A second document showed he was indicted for stealing two guns. Reportedly Sash's indictments indicated he played a major role in the rebellion, as the members of Shays's Council of War and directors of the rebel strategy were excluded from the indemnity that was granted to less serious offenders. Governor John Hancock pardoned all participants. Sash had been born to Sarah Sash and Samson Dunbar in Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1755. During the revolutionary war, Sash enlisted as a private in Colonel Ruggles Woodbridge's regiment in August 1777. In May 1781 he reenlisted as a private in the seventh regiment.

Richard Allen and Absalom Jones organized the Free African society, a Black self-help group, in Philadelphia. Allen was perhaps the most conspicuous Black leader in the country before the rise of Frederick Douglass. His stature rested upon his leadership in the establishment of such organizations as the Free African Society and the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church. Jones was an associate of Allen for many years, but the two parted when Jones, who was attracted by Anglicanism, became rector of the first Protestant Episcopal congregation for Blacks. Jones was born enslaved in Sussex, Delaware. His enslaver took him to Philadelphia to work as a handyman in a store where he was taught to write by one of the clerks. He later attended night school and completed his education. Saving money that visitors to his enslaver's house had given him, together with his earnings, Jones purchased both his own freedom and that of his wife. He became a member of the St. George's Methodist Church in Philadelphia. While attending services there one Sunday in 1786, Jones, Allen, and other worshippers, were pulled from their knees and ordered to move to the reserved worship area for Blacks in the church's balcony. Out of this incident grew the Free African society, a quasi-religious organization whose programs included a fund for mutual aid, burial assistance, relief for widows and orphans, strengthening of marriage ties and personal morality, cooperation with abolition societies, and correspondence with free Blacks in other areas. It was probably the first stable, independent Black social organization in the United States. Among the other joint efforts of Allen and Jones were the organization of relief measures for the Black population in Philadelphia during the yellow-fever epidemic in 1793, and the raising of a company of Black militia during the War of 1812.

Negro Masonic Order African Lodge was established through the efforts of Prince Hall, an active member of the Boston Free African Society. Prince Hall and others petitioned the Grand Lodge of England for permission to establish this Masonic Lodge.

The Continental Congress prohibited slavery in the Northwest territory under the famous Ordinance of 1787. Specifically, there could be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the region Northwest of the Ohio River except as punishment for a crime.

Prince Hall, a veteran of the War for Independence, received a charter for a masonic lodge for Blacks. This group was chartered in England as African lodge no. 459. Hall, the first master of the organization, set up additional African lodges in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island during 1797. Hall was born in Barbados, British West Indies, in 1735, the son of an Englishman and a free Black woman. He was apprenticed as a leather worker but abandoned that training to emigrate to Boston. During the Revolutionary War, Hall and twelve other free Blacks were inducted into a masonic lodge by a group of British soldiers stationed in Boston. When the British evacuated the area, Hall organized a masonic lodge for Blacks. Hall, a self-educated clergyman, also championed the establishment of schools for Black children in Boston, urged Massachusetts to legislatively oppose slavery, and proposed measures to protect free Blacks from kidnapping and enslavement. Following his death in Boston on December 4, 1807, the African Grand Lodge became the Prince Hall Grand Lodge, which has become a major social institution in Black America.

The "Three-fifths Compromise," which allowed the South to count each enslaved person as three-fifths of a person in determining representation in the House of Representatives, was incorporated. The Constitution also prohibited any legislation that might close the slave trade before 1808, but allowed a tax of ten dollars per head on each enslaved person imported before that date and demanded that fugitive enslaved persons be returned to their enslavers.

Caesar Tarrant was freed by the Virginia legislature for having served with distinction in the American Revolution. Tarrant was instructed by his enslaver, Carter Tarrant, on piloting ships. Tarrant was piloting the Schooner Patriot when it captured a British brig headed for Boston with supplies. After his service, Tarrant acquired property which was willed to his family upon his death in 1798.

Abraham was born into slavery in Pensacola, Florida. His Seminole name was "Sohanac" or "Souanakkc Tustenukle." By the early 1820s he was living in Florida with the slave-holding Seminole Indians, among whom runaway enslaved Blacks often sought refuge. In 1825 Abraham accompanied Seminole chief Micanopy on an official visit to Washington, D.C., and was granted his freedom. Over the next several years, Abraham witnessed many Seminole treaties as an interpreter. During this period, the Seminoles were being pressured by the U.S. government to move from Florida; Abraham secretly advised Micanopy to resist this pressure and encouraged the enslaved plantation Blacks of the area to support the Seminoles and the Blacks associated with the Seminole. During the Third Seminole War, which began in 1835, Abraham negotiated for peace, eventually persuading Micanopy to surrender. Abraham's settlement provided that the Black allies of the Seminoles be allowed to leave Florida with them. On February 25, 1839, Abraham was sent west, where he raised cattle near the Little River in Arkansas. Abraham had two sons, Renty and Washington, and one daughter by his wife, Hagar.

Newport Gardner, one of the first Black music teachers in America, opened a music school in Newport, Massachusetts. Gardner, born in 1746, was enslaved to Caleb Gardner, one of Newport's leading merchants. He taught himself to read, sing, and write music. One of his compositions, "Crooked Shanks", was included in the collection "A Number of Original Airs, Dumas and Tiros", published in 1803. He was also active in religious affairs. He was a founder of the Newport Colored Union Church and Society and became a missionary in Africa in 1826, the estimated year of his death.

Free Blacks in Charleston, South Carolina, presented a petition to the state legislature protesting laws restricting their freedoms. They pointed specifically to the Act of 1740, which deprived enslaved Blacks and free Blacks of the right to testify under oath in court and the right to trial by jury. They also reminded the legislators that they were taxpaying citizens of South Carolina and were considered free citizens of the state, and thus hoped to be treated as such. At the same time, they acknowledged that they did not presume to hope that they shall be put on an equal footing with the free white citizens of the state in general. The petitioners were seeking the repeal of the objectionable clauses of the Act of 1740.

Congress passes the first fugitive slave act, making it a crime to harbor an escaped enslaved Black or to interfere with his or her arrest. Congress would later pass a second fugitive slave act in 1850.

Eli Whitney of Massachusetts, a white inventor, obtained a patent for his cotton gin. The invention strengthened the institution of slavery, especially in the South.

Richard Allen of Philadelphia founded the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first A.M.E. church in the United States.

Jamaica maroons rebelled and tried to incite a general slave insurrection. They gave the British a severe drubbing. Bloodhounds were used by the British against the maroons. The maroons offered to surrender on the express condition that none of their number would be deported from the island, as the legislature wished. General Walpole hesitated, but could obtain peace on no other terms so he agreed. The maroons surrendered their arms and the whites immediately seized 600 of the ringleaders and transported them to Nova Scotia. The legislature then voted a sword worth $2,500 to General Walpole, which he indignantly refused to accept. Eventually many of these exiled maroons found their way to Sierra Leone, West Africa.

John Malvin was born free to a free mother, Dalcus Malvin, and an enslaved father in Dumfries, Prince William County, Virginia. He was taught reading and spelling by an old enslaved Black person who used the Bible as a teaching guide, and he learned carpentry from his father. He moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1827 to remain free, and he became a community leader and helped with the underground railroad. Malvin married Harriet Dorsey in Cincinnati on March 8, 1829. After his arrests and brief imprisonment as a fugitive slave in 1831, Malvin became interested in emigration and migration. In 1832 he founded the School Education Society in Cleveland to provide a school for Black children. Malvin purchased his father-in-law's freedom in 1833. He was a delegate to the National Convention of Colored Freemen in Cleveland in 1848. During the 1850s, Malvin attended meetings of the influential Ohio state Convention of Colored Citizens and was elected vice president of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society in 1858. Malvin worked to end the Black laws of Ohio, which prohibited Blacks from attending schools and imposed a five-hundred-dollar security bond on Blacks entering the state. At the start of the Civil War, Malvin urged Black Americans in Cleveland to organize troops, although it would be several years before Blacks would be allowed to serve. One year before his death, Malvin's autobiography was published in the Cleveland leader as a forty-two-page booklet entitled "Autobiography". Malvin died on July 30, 1880, in Cleveland and was buried in Erie Cemetery.

The Boston African Society is established. Starting with forty-four members, they were a group of Blacks that provided a form of health insurance and funeral benefits, as well as spiritual fellowship and brotherhood, to its members. The purpose of the society was to care for sick and impoverished members; particularly women and children.

Little documentation of James Barbadoes's life remains, despite his activism and leadership among free Blacks in Boston. In 1930 Barbados's name appeared on a list of freed Black heads of families in Boston. He was a member of the Massachusetts General Colored Association and a delegate to the Convention of The People of Color in Philadelphia in 1831. Barbadoes was also a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society. At a May 1934 meeting of the New England anti-Slavery Society, Barbadoes urged support for William Lloyd Garrison and his abolitionist newspaper, the Liberator. Barbadoes and three others extended an invitation to Garrison to attend a meeting of Black American citizens; after that he returned from England. In the 1830s, Barbadoes ran a barbershop and rented rooms in Boston. He died on June 22, 1841, of West India Fever after a doomed mission to settle a group of Blacks in Jamaica.

Polish General Tadeusz Kosciuszko was awarded a land grant in Ohio for his services during the Revolutionary War. Kosciuszko directed the land be sold and the proceeds be used to found a school for Blacks.

George Horton was born enslaved on a plantation in Northampton County, North Carolina. He bargained with his enslavers for the privilege of earning money by selling love poems to students at the University of North Carolina. Not able to write himself; Horton dictated his poems to the students. As a result, his earliest works have been forgotten or attributed to others. Horton was taught to write by Carolina Hentz, a writer, abolitionist, and wife of a professor. His first volume of poetry, The Hope of Liberty (1829), was not successful enough to pay for Horton's freedom, but it earned him some local fame and later promoted the cause of abolition with two reprintings under the title, Poems by a Slave (1837, 1838). Horton published two more volumes of poetry in his lifetime: The Poetical works of George M. Horton, the Colored Bard of North Carolina (1845) and Naked Genius (1865). It is believed Horton died in 1883 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Blacks in North Carolina presented a petition to Congress protesting a state law that required enslaved Blacks, although freed by their quaker enslavers, to be returned to the state and to the status of slavery. This first recorded anti-slavery petition by Blacks was rejected by the Congress.