Join our next Oral History & The Law workshop on Wednesday, August 13 from 1:00-2:30pm EDT! Dr. Trevor Reed (Irvine School of Law, UC-Irvine) and Francine Spang-Willis (CEO of Appearing Flying Woman Consulting) will discuss issues of emergent concern to Indigenous communities in the realms of federal law, community cultural protocols, and the ethics of […]
From the National Park Service—if you want to save a copy, grab it soon. The current administration is taking apart the NPS.
Each June Black communities across the United States celebrate Juneteenth, a day that commemorates African American freedom. The conclusion of the U.S. Civil War in April 1865 freed almost all enslaved people in the U.S. South, but Black men, women, and children in Texas remained in bondage until Union soldiers freed them in June 1865. However, not all enslaved Black people in Texas waited for the Union Army to liberate them. Some escaped south to Mexico in search of freedom decades before the Civil War began.
In September 1858 twenty-two-year-old Sandy escaped from Big Cypress Creek, Texas, which was eighteen miles north of Houston. This instance was not the first time that he had run away. The last time he had fled, someone captured him approximately 180 miles southwest of Big Cypress Creek.[1] Undeterred by this failed escape, Sandy was “determined to make his way to Mexico.”[2] Despite wearing an “iron collar around his neck and shackles on his feet,” Sandy ran away again hoping to find freedom.[3] There were limited opportunities for fugitives from slavery to receive aid during their escapes through Texas. If Sandy ventured near an enslaved community, he could obtain food from its members. If he arrived to Hidalgo County, Texas, he could seek refuge at Nathaniel Jackson’s ranch or use John Webber’s ferry to cross the Rio Grande.[4] While it is unknown if Sandy ever reached freedom in Mexico, his efforts show that enslaved Texans viewed the nation as a safe haven.
By the early 1850s most enslaved people in Texas knew that Mexico was their best option for freedom. In a 1937 Works Progress Administration interview, then ninety-two-year-old Felix Haywood recalled, “Sometimes someone would come ‘long and try to get us to run up North and be free. We used to laugh at that. There wasn’t no reason to run up North. All we had to do was to walk, but walk South. And we’d be free as soon as we crossed the Rio Grande.”[5] Haywood and others in his enslaved Texas community likely learned about freedom in Mexico from local Mexicans in Texas, or Tejanos. Because of this spread of information, enslaved people in Texas knew that the northern United States and Canada were not feasible places for freedom not only because of the significant distance, but also because Mexico had abolished slavery decades earlier. In 1829 Mexican President Vicente Guerrero abolished slavery, but he exempted Texas from abolition to placate Anglo enslavers. In 1837 Mexico abolished slavery again without any exceptions.[6] Men and women in bondage who thought about escape used their knowledge of abolition in Mexico and a limited understanding of their local areas to seek freedom in a northeastern Mexican state.[7]
Unlike enslaved Black people who escaped to the northern United States and Canada, there were few communities of antislavery activists to assist self-liberated Black people who arrived in Mexico. After crossing the Rio Grande, freedom seekers typically sought refuge in the nearest border town. Coahuila border town Piedras Negras was an important site of freedom in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands because fugitives from slavery frequently escaped there in the early 1850s; a nearby settlement of Mascogos (Black Seminoles from the United States) helped reinforce the idea of Coahuila as a space of refuge.[8] Still, self-emancipated Black people residing in Mexican border towns had to remain vigilant to maintain their freedom. Alarmed by the flight of enslaved people to Mexico, Anglo Texas enslavers employed Texas Rangers––Texas’s police force founded in 1835––to track, capture, and extradite freedom seekers who had reached Mexico. While the U.S. government could not enforce the Fugitive Slave Act (1850) outside of U.S. borders, Rangers and others employed to kidnap fugitives from slavery used violence to capture freedom seekers in Mexico and return them to Texas.
Enslaved people in Texas imagined their journeys to freedom differently than those in bondage in the Upper and Lower U.S. South. Drawing from information they gathered from local Mexicans and their own failed escape attempts, enslaved Texans crafted routes that guided them south to Mexico. Their experiences cast a new light on enslavement and resistance in antebellum Texas. While Juneteenth celebrates Black freedom gained shortly after the U.S. Civil War, there were many freedom seekers from Texas who self-emancipated to Mexico before 1865.
Article contributed by Mekala Audain – Associate Professor of History at The College of New Jersey.
Audain, Mekala. “Design His Course to Mexico: The Fugitive Slave Experience in the Texas–Mexico Borderlands, 1850–1853.” In Fugitive Slaves and Spaces of Freedom in North America, 1775–1860, edited by Damian Alan Pargas, 232–250. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2018.
Baumgartner, Alice L. South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War. New York: Basic Books, 2020.
Cornell, Sarah E. “Citizens of Nowhere: Fugitive Slaves and African Americans in Mexico, 1833–1857.” Journal of American History 100. 2 (2013): 351–374.
Kelley, Sean. “‘Mexico in His Head’: Slavery and the Texas–Mexico Border, 1810–1860.” Journal of Social History 37. 3 (2004): 709–723.
Mareite, Thomas. “Conditional Freedom: Free Soil and Fugitive Slaves from the US South to Mexico’s Northeast, 1803–1861.” PhD diss. Leiden University, 2020.Nichols, James David. The Limits of Liberty: Mobility and the Making of the Eastern U.S.–Mexico Border. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018.
[1] “Runaway,” The Weekly Telegraph (Houston, TX), October 20, 1858, University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.
[2]“Runaway.”
[3] “Runaway.”
[4] Roseann Bacha-Garza, “Race and Ethnicity along the Antebellum Rio Grande: Emancipated Slaves and Mixed Race Colonies,” in The Civil War on the Rio Grande, 1846–1876, eds. Roseann Bacha-Garza, Christopher L. Miller, and Russell K. Skowronek (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2019), 94–95.
[5] George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave – Texas Narratives, Vol. 4, Part 1 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972), 132. Emphasis in the original.
[6] Randolph B. Campbell, An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821–1865 (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1989), 25–26; Manuel Dublán y José Maria Lozano, Legislación Mexicana, o, colección complete de las disposiciones legislativas expedidas desde la independencia de la republica, tomo III (Mexico: Dublán y Lozano, 1876), 352.
[7] Campbell, An Empire for Slavery, 56.
[8] Frederick Law Olmstead, A Journey Through Texas; or a Saddle-trip on the Southwestern Frontier: With a Statistical Appendix (New York: Dix, Edwards & Co., 1857), 324. For more about Mascogos in Coahuila, see Kevin Mulroy, Freedom on the Border: The Seminole Maroons in Florida, the Indian Territory, Coahuila, and Texas (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1993).
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more
You think they would have looked at the policy more closely before cheering their fearless leader for restoring the names of military bases named in honor of Confederate generals. Instead, the Confederate heritage community has, once again, been made to look like fools.
When will they learn that Donald Trump has no interest in honoring their Confederate ancestors unless it benefits his political or business interests. He is and will always remain an opportunist. His views on the display of the Confederate battle flag have been all over the place since 2015 and he even placed a historical marker on his Virginia golf course commemorating a fake Civil War battle.
Back in February, organizations like the Sons of Confederate Veterans and Virginia Flaggers criticized President Trump for restoring the name Fort Bragg, because it honored a completely different person, who just happened to share the last name of Confederate general Braxton Bragg.
What Trump announced yesterday is just a continuation of this policy, but it looks like the Virginia Flaggers and their followers haven’t caught on yet. Here are just a few of the roughly 1,100 comments that have been posted on their Facebook page.
Thank you President Trump for bringing back our Great Southern Heroes names-!!!
Thank you President Trump . You’re a true American and the Greatest President we have ever had.
Becouse presudent trump is onnly brave Men spouk true America god bles president.
I love this man.!!! He JUST needs folks to be on his side… He can fix it all.! I believe this in my heart.! Deo Vindice.
Not everyone has been deceived, including none other than Confederate president Jefferson Davis.
Who is the genius, who figured out how to restore the name of Fort A.P. Hill without violating the law banning the naming of military bases after Confederate generals?
I am going to be laughing about this all day today.
As I pointed out back in February, the restoration of these military base names has absolutely nothing to do with honoring the Confederacy or Confederate military leaders. The Virginia Flaggers and other Confederate heritage groups should no better than to place their trust in a corrupt Northern businessman.
Isn’t this exactly the profile of the ‘evil and corrupt Yankee’ that we are told their ancestors were fighting against during the Civil War? LOL
Of course, what is striking is the hypocrisy behind their outrage over the renaming of these military bases. It should come as no surprise that no one in this community is speaking out against the proposal to rename naval vessels that honor some of this nation’s most important freedom fighters.
Mr. [Harvey] Milk is one of several trailblazers whose name has been identified for possible removal from naval vessels. According to a senior official familiar with a memo from John Phelan, the secretary of the Navy, they include Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, another Supreme Court justice, who became a feminist icon; Harriet Tubman, who, after being born into slavery, became an abolitionist instrumental in the Underground Railroad; Lucy Stone, a prominent abolitionist and suffragist; Medgar Evers, a civil-rights leader who was assassinated by a member of the Ku Klux Klan; Cesar Chavez, a labor leader; and Dolores Huerta, another labor leader.
Somehow this does not rise to the level of ‘erasing history.’
Harvey Milk served nearly four years in the Navy. He was discharged at the rank of a junior lieutenant after being threatened with a court martial because of his sexual orientation.
In 1943, Medgar Evers dropped out of high school and enlisted in the Army Reserve Corps during World War II. He unloaded weapons, vehicles, and supplies from transport ships. After D-Day, Evers and his 325th Port Company went into France, where he served in the all-Black 3677th Quartermaster Company and 958th Quartermaster Service Company. He was part of the Red Ball Express, a truck convoy system primarily composed of African American Soldiers that supplied Allied forces.
I guess the only honor and history that is worth defending is of those people who chose to make war against the United States rather than those who have defended it or stood up for its principle of equality.
For now, I am going to relish the fact that these people got exactly what they deserved.
We’re hosting a community support space for OHA members next week, focusing especially on independent practitioners. Join OHA President Troy Reeves, VP Sarah Milligan, and your fellow OHA community members in an open conversation about the issues and concerns all of you are currently facing, and any opportunities on the horizon. As usual, all members […]
From one of my favorite history blogs, History Can’t Hide by Khalil Greene. You can find it here: Historycanthide.substack.com. About Mr. Greene:
I’m Kahlil Greene, aka the Gen Z Historian, and one week after my 19th birthday, I became the first Black student body president in Yale’s 318-year history.
Now, I’m a Peabody-winning edutainer with 750,000+ followers and 30 million+ views across TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn, where I share history lessons that unpack the injustices shaping our world today.
I write History Can’t Hide, a newsletter uncovering buried and whitewashed histories, and I just premiered my first documentary series with National Geographic, bringing these stories to the screen.
Today, millions of Americans will wave flags, fire up grills, and celebrate the birth of freedom. Politicians will give speeches about liberty and justice for all. Children will learn about brave patriots fighting for independence against British tyranny.
But here’s what they won’t hear: More Black Americans fought against American independence than for it. Between 15,000-20,000 Black Americans joined British forces during the Revolutionary War, while only 5,000-8,000 served with the Continental Army. For enslaved people in 1776, the enemy offered freedom while the “freedom fighters” offered continued bondage.
The Fourth of July is a carefully constructed lie that erases the choices Black Americans actually made when liberty was on the line.
I’m fighting to document stories like these British Black regiments before they’re dismissed as “unpatriotic” or erased entirely, and I need your help!
With no corporate backing or wealthy sponsors, this work depends entirely on readers like you.
If everyone reading this became a paid subscriber, I could investigate these hidden histories full-time, but right now less than 4% of my 27,000 followers are paid subscribers.
If you believe in journalism that challenges July 4th mythology when others look away, please consider a paid subscription today!
History Can’t Hide from Kahlil Greene is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
In November 1775, Lord Dunmore, Virginia’s royal governor, issued a proclamation that changed everything. Any enslaved person owned by a “rebel” who joined British forces would be freed. It was strategic warfare designed to destabilize the colonial economy and terrify plantation owners. But for thousands of enslaved Americans, the motivation didn’t matter. It was a path to freedom.
The response was immediate and massive. Within months, hundreds of Black men formed Dunmore’s “Ethiopian Regiment,” wearing uniforms emblazoned with “Liberty to Slaves.” When British General Henry Clinton expanded the offer in 1779 through the Philipsburg Proclamation, promising freedom to any enslaved person who escaped rebel masters, an estimated 100,000 enslaved people fled to British lines during the war.
Conversely, when Black soldiers like Salem Poor and Peter Salem fought heroically at Bunker Hill in 1775, the Continental Congress banned Black enlistment entirely. George Washington, himself a slaveholder, initially expelled Black soldiers already serving. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that “all men are created equal” while keeping half a million people in chains.
Black Americans chose the side that offered them humanity.
Throughout the war, Black Americans served in multiple British units across different regions. The Black Dragoons operated as cavalry in South Carolina, conducting raids against Patriot forces. The Black Pioneers worked as combat engineers and laborers, building fortifications and supporting military operations from Charleston to New York.
Black soldiers fought alongside British and Loyalist forces in major engagements, not just in support roles. When Francis Marion’s Patriots encountered Black cavalry units, they found themselves facing skilled horsemen who knew the local terrain and fought with the desperation of people whose freedom depended on victory.
British military records show these soldiers received better treatment than most Black Americans who served the Patriot cause. They were paid as soldiers, not property, and they lived in military camps as free men. When the war ended, thousands evacuated with British forces to Nova Scotia, England, and eventually Sierra Leone, maintaining their freedom.
The Continental Army did include Black soldiers, but their path to service was far more complicated. Initially banned by Washington, Black Americans were only gradually accepted as manpower shortages became desperate. Even then, their service often came with broken promises.
Rhode Island created an all-Black regiment in 1778, promising freedom to enslaved men who enlisted. These soldiers fought bravely at Newport and served until Yorktown. A French officer described Washington’s army as “speckled” because of racial integration in most units. Black and white soldiers fought side by side in every major battle from Lexington to Yorktown.
But integration didn’t mean equality. Many Black soldiers who served the American cause were returned to slavery after the war. James Lafayette, the spy who helped secure victory at Yorktown, had to petition the Virginia legislature for his freedom years later. Others waited decades for promised manumissions, if they came at all.
The contrast with British treatment was stark. While American Black soldiers faced uncertain futures, those who evacuated with British forces began new lives as free people in British territories worldwide.
The real story of Black Americans in the Revolution exposes the central lie of July 4th mythology. This was a war between two colonial powers, with Black Americans forced to choose which offered them the better chance at liberation.
Most chose Britain because British promises, however strategically motivated, were more reliable than American promises of universal liberty that explicitly excluded them. The numbers tell the story. Roughly 20,000 Black Americans sided with Britain versus 8,000 with the Patriots, a ratio of about 2.5 to 1.
Those who chose America often did so hoping the revolution’s ideals would eventually include them. Some northern states did begin gradual emancipation after the war. But many Black Patriots died still enslaved, having bet their lives on a freedom that never materialized.
The thousands who evacuated with British forces were refugees from American slavery, seeking the liberty that the “land of the free” denied them. They established some of the first large-scale free Black communities in the Atlantic world, from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone.
Every July 4th, America celebrates a sanitized version of its founding that erases the choices Black Americans actually made when freedom was on the line. We’re told to honor the founders’ vision of liberty while ignoring that most Black Americans who lived through the Revolution judged that vision inadequate and chose differently.
The same mythology that turns a slaveholding revolution into a pure freedom struggle shapes how we understand racial justice today. When we pretend the founding was about universal liberty rather than white independence, we make current racial inequalities seem like deviations from American values rather than continuations of them.
So tomorrow, when the fireworks light up the sky and the speeches celebrate American liberty, remember the 20,000 Black Americans who saw through the contradiction and chose differently. They understood that freedom isn’t about what flag you salute, but whether that flag represents your liberation or your continued oppression.
The British offered imperfect freedom, but it was freedom nonetheless. America offered perfect rhetoric about liberty while maintaining perfect bondage. For Black Americans in 1776, the choice was obvious, even if it meant fighting against the country that would eventually, grudgingly, centuries later, acknowledge their humanity.
From one of my favorite history blogs, History Can’t Hide by Khalil Greene. You can find it here: Historycanthide.substack.com. About Mr. Greene:
I’m Kahlil Greene, aka the Gen Z Historian, and one week after my 19th birthday, I became the first Black student body president in Yale’s 318-year history.
Now, I’m a Peabody-winning edutainer with 750,000+ followers and 30 million+ views across TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn, where I share history lessons that unpack the injustices shaping our world today.
I write History Can’t Hide, a newsletter uncovering buried and whitewashed histories, and I just premiered my first documentary series with National Geographic, bringing these stories to the screen.
Today, millions of Americans will wave flags, fire up grills, and celebrate the birth of freedom. Politicians will give speeches about liberty and justice for all. Children will learn about brave patriots fighting for independence against British tyranny.
But here’s what they won’t hear: More Black Americans fought against American independence than for it. Between 15,000-20,000 Black Americans joined British forces during the Revolutionary War, while only 5,000-8,000 served with the Continental Army. For enslaved people in 1776, the enemy offered freedom while the “freedom fighters” offered continued bondage.
The Fourth of July is a carefully constructed lie that erases the choices Black Americans actually made when liberty was on the line.
I’m fighting to document stories like these British Black regiments before they’re dismissed as “unpatriotic” or erased entirely, and I need your help!
With no corporate backing or wealthy sponsors, this work depends entirely on readers like you.
If everyone reading this became a paid subscriber, I could investigate these hidden histories full-time, but right now less than 4% of my 27,000 followers are paid subscribers.
If you believe in journalism that challenges July 4th mythology when others look away, please consider a paid subscription today!
History Can’t Hide from Kahlil Greene is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
In November 1775, Lord Dunmore, Virginia’s royal governor, issued a proclamation that changed everything. Any enslaved person owned by a “rebel” who joined British forces would be freed. It was strategic warfare designed to destabilize the colonial economy and terrify plantation owners. But for thousands of enslaved Americans, the motivation didn’t matter. It was a path to freedom.
The response was immediate and massive. Within months, hundreds of Black men formed Dunmore’s “Ethiopian Regiment,” wearing uniforms emblazoned with “Liberty to Slaves.” When British General Henry Clinton expanded the offer in 1779 through the Philipsburg Proclamation, promising freedom to any enslaved person who escaped rebel masters, an estimated 100,000 enslaved people fled to British lines during the war.
Conversely, when Black soldiers like Salem Poor and Peter Salem fought heroically at Bunker Hill in 1775, the Continental Congress banned Black enlistment entirely. George Washington, himself a slaveholder, initially expelled Black soldiers already serving. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that “all men are created equal” while keeping half a million people in chains.
Black Americans chose the side that offered them humanity.
Throughout the war, Black Americans served in multiple British units across different regions. The Black Dragoons operated as cavalry in South Carolina, conducting raids against Patriot forces. The Black Pioneers worked as combat engineers and laborers, building fortifications and supporting military operations from Charleston to New York.
Black soldiers fought alongside British and Loyalist forces in major engagements, not just in support roles. When Francis Marion’s Patriots encountered Black cavalry units, they found themselves facing skilled horsemen who knew the local terrain and fought with the desperation of people whose freedom depended on victory.
British military records show these soldiers received better treatment than most Black Americans who served the Patriot cause. They were paid as soldiers, not property, and they lived in military camps as free men. When the war ended, thousands evacuated with British forces to Nova Scotia, England, and eventually Sierra Leone, maintaining their freedom.
The Continental Army did include Black soldiers, but their path to service was far more complicated. Initially banned by Washington, Black Americans were only gradually accepted as manpower shortages became desperate. Even then, their service often came with broken promises.
Rhode Island created an all-Black regiment in 1778, promising freedom to enslaved men who enlisted. These soldiers fought bravely at Newport and served until Yorktown. A French officer described Washington’s army as “speckled” because of racial integration in most units. Black and white soldiers fought side by side in every major battle from Lexington to Yorktown.
But integration didn’t mean equality. Many Black soldiers who served the American cause were returned to slavery after the war. James Lafayette, the spy who helped secure victory at Yorktown, had to petition the Virginia legislature for his freedom years later. Others waited decades for promised manumissions, if they came at all.
The contrast with British treatment was stark. While American Black soldiers faced uncertain futures, those who evacuated with British forces began new lives as free people in British territories worldwide.
The real story of Black Americans in the Revolution exposes the central lie of July 4th mythology. This was a war between two colonial powers, with Black Americans forced to choose which offered them the better chance at liberation.
Most chose Britain because British promises, however strategically motivated, were more reliable than American promises of universal liberty that explicitly excluded them. The numbers tell the story. Roughly 20,000 Black Americans sided with Britain versus 8,000 with the Patriots, a ratio of about 2.5 to 1.
Those who chose America often did so hoping the revolution’s ideals would eventually include them. Some northern states did begin gradual emancipation after the war. But many Black Patriots died still enslaved, having bet their lives on a freedom that never materialized.
The thousands who evacuated with British forces were refugees from American slavery, seeking the liberty that the “land of the free” denied them. They established some of the first large-scale free Black communities in the Atlantic world, from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone.
Every July 4th, America celebrates a sanitized version of its founding that erases the choices Black Americans actually made when freedom was on the line. We’re told to honor the founders’ vision of liberty while ignoring that most Black Americans who lived through the Revolution judged that vision inadequate and chose differently.
The same mythology that turns a slaveholding revolution into a pure freedom struggle shapes how we understand racial justice today. When we pretend the founding was about universal liberty rather than white independence, we make current racial inequalities seem like deviations from American values rather than continuations of them.
So tomorrow, when the fireworks light up the sky and the speeches celebrate American liberty, remember the 20,000 Black Americans who saw through the contradiction and chose differently. They understood that freedom isn’t about what flag you salute, but whether that flag represents your liberation or your continued oppression.
The British offered imperfect freedom, but it was freedom nonetheless. America offered perfect rhetoric about liberty while maintaining perfect bondage. For Black Americans in 1776, the choice was obvious, even if it meant fighting against the country that would eventually, grudgingly, centuries later, acknowledge their humanity.