Adam Griffin
   Staff Writer

The common narrative of America’s revolution and founding era speaks of African-American slavery and disenfranchisement — the dehumanizing of the black race in America.

While this history is valid and slavery is a black spot on our national ethos, it is not the full story. African Americans contributed greatly to the founding of America in battlefields, courtrooms and convention houses.

African American founders contributed to the creation of the country in ways that could not be replaced, and even the slave labor of blacks built the great monuments and capital city of Washington, D.C.

The racism that grew in America and was ultimately a major factor in the Civil War that has plagued American society and continues to permeates our problems.

With that being said, it is imperative that people are educated about the contributions that African Americans have made to our country since its inception.

Free blacks and slaves had a great impact on the founding of America from the Revolution up through Ratification of the Constitution, even voting and participating in conventions. Many blacks participated on the battlefields of the American Revolution and had their blood spilt for the cause of independence.

Men such as Crispus Attucks, the first casualty of the Revolutionary War during the “Boston Massacre,” or Peter Salem, a former slave who was freed to serve in the Massachusetts militia, fought in Bunker Hill and served for five years before marrying and living out the remainder of his life peacefully in the new nation.

These men and others were part of the compact that formed the U.S. although this history has often been whitewashed.

Six of the original 13 states granted free blacks the right to vote in certain cases by constitutional provision — Delaware, New York, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Maryland.

In Baltimore, more blacks than whites voted and in many states during ratification of the Constitution blacks voted alongside whites in the ratifying conventions.

Some free blacks not only had the right to vote but also the right to hold office. In no state could a slave vote, but following the American Revolution, which put an end to Britain’s prohibition on the abolition of slavery in the colonies, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire and New York abolished slavery.

Many people have discarded or forgotten that these black participants were indeed citizens, drawing on a notion of national citizenship that differs from state citizenship and reading the Constitution in a way that subjugates the entire black race to inferiority as slave property by law or inferiority based on their African inheritance.

Men such as the Reverend Absalom Jones typify the African-American contribution to the founding.

Jones was ordained the first African American Episcopal priest and founded an African American church in 1794. He worked hard building the church during the Revolution, which was a fundamental institution of the society.  He also worked with Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, in medicine to help treat the Yellow Fever epidemic in Philadelphia.

      Another African-American founder and intellectual, Benjamin Banneker, wrote a series of almanacs and corresponded with Thomas Jefferson on issues of slavery and racial equality. A surveyor, naturalist, farmer and astronomer, Banneker used his knowledge and expertise to refute and challenge Jefferson’s racist pseudo-scientific views postulated in his “Notes on the State of Virginia.”

Prince Estabrook was a minuteman who was injured in service at Lexington and Concord. A broadside from the time had a Negro man listed in the injury list. As with many slaves and indentured servants that served in the Revolutionary War, he obtained his freedom from his master as a result of his service.

Another influential contributor to the American Revolutionary era from the African-American community was Prince Hall.

Hall was a leader of the free black community in Boston; he spent his time working for abolition and education initiatives for free blacks. As a founder of black freemasonry, he worked to give access to African-Americans in the higher social circles and leadership roles in the community.

Hall also worked to enlist blacks in the Continental Army, believing that the more involved African-Americans were in the Revolutionary cause and founding of the new nation, the more say they would have in their freedom and governance.

Prince Whipple was an African-American continental soldier who fought at the Battle of Trenton and is painted in the famous “Washington crossing the Delaware.”

He assisted his master, General William Whipple of the New Hampshire militia and legally was given his freedom after the War. These African-American founders further added to a proud but often forgotten legacy of black founders.

The history of African-American contributions to the founding falls into the histories that have been overlooked to our own detriment. This history is the brighter side of an otherwise dark part of our founding history.

African Americans at all levels were essential to the founding of America and during Black History month, it is right that we remember some of the most fundamental contributions that they have made from the earliest days of the Republican experiment.

Without the contributions of blacks — free and enslaved — at the founding there is a great likelihood that America is not the country it is today.

Despite the racially perverse views of great portions of the country at the founding, many of the Founding Fathers knew that the principles of the Declaration of Independence would spread to embrace all human beings.

They did not know how the problem of African chattel slavery would end, but they knew that it was on the wrong side of history and as an institution would be on the defensive when the liberating philosophy of America broadened to all sectors of society.

The African-American heroic figures from the founding often put their lives on the line and risked their necks for the creation of America when their place in that new nation was uncertain if the founding was successful.

This selfless contribution to the Revolutionary cause shows a side of history that validates the idea of racial equality that would become prominent in the 20th and 21st centuries.