Free African Americans
By 1770, there may have been 40,000 or more free African Americans the Thirteen colonies.Template:ColoCitation needed This number may have included runaway slaves, descendants of early indentured servants, and black immigrants from the West Indies.
The status of free black people in colonial America was one of uncertainty, one between a slave and a free white. He was faced with special legal, economic, and social restrictions. However, few opted to trade their free status for that of a slave. Many acquired property, and left wills leaving their property to their children.
Read more about this topic: African Americans In The Revolutionary War
Famous quotes containing the words free, african and/or americans:
“Promiscuity: optimism, free enterprise, mobility—the American Dream.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“I never feel so conscious of my race as I do when I stand before a class of twenty-five young men and women eager to learn about what it is to be black in America.”
—Claire Oberon Garcia, African American college professor. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. B3 (July 27, 1994)
“The Americans ... have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)