A portrait of Pauline with her charges from the book “Soublette et Fils: Photography in Curaçao around 1900” featuring photographs from the studio of Robert Soublette.

As a young student, Maritcha Lyons (b. 1848), testified before the Rhode Island State Legislature for her right to attend school - as an adult she fought for racial justice & gender equality as an educator & founder of the Woman’s Loyal Union of New York.

This portrait from around 1922 depicts Rosa and Moses Demps with their children in front of their home in St. Augustine. Black families lived in St. Augustine since before the English arrived in Jamestown - parish registers recorded the birth of a Black child in St. Augustine in 1606.

The Girl Scouts of Tropical Florida c. 1966. From the archival collection of The Black Archives History & Research Foundation of South Florida.

As a fellow native of Miami Dade, I love the work of Melissa Gutierrez. AKA West of Chester, her online shop is open now for 24 hours. I couldn’t resist getting a 2nd print of this because I love the ubiquitous Spanish expression ojalá (derived from Arabic) that means LET'S HOPE! westofchester.com

When Charlayne Hunter-Gault arrived at University of GA in 1961, some white students responded with violence; she was suspended “for her safety” but returned with a court order & earned a journalism degree. Portrait by Jospeh Schwarz, a professor who organized a faculty resolution to reinstate her.

Dr. Caroline Still Anderson (born in Philadelphia in 1848) was a physician & educator. Her parents, William & Letitia Still, were leaders in the Underground Railroad who helped scores of Americans to free themselves from slavery. Her grandparents were themselves self-liberated, formerly enslaved.

After buying her freedom, Elizabeth Keckley established a clothing business in Washington DC in 1860 favored by the elite. During the Civil War she established an organization to assist formerly enslaved Americans. After Lincoln’s assassination she published a memoir to raise funds for his widow.

Dr. Edward Bouchet (born in New Haven, CT in 1852) was among the first Americans in U.S. history to earn a Ph.D. in physics. The son of a formerly enslaved father, Dr. Bouchet earned his doctorate from Yale in 1876.

James Forten heard the 1st public reading of the Declaration of Independence in 1776; he participated in the American Revolution & fought for its ideals long after the war. A skilled entrepreneur & ardent abolitionist, his wife & daughters founded the 1st interracial antislavery society for women.

Gertrude Mossell (here in a portrait with her daughters c. 1890) was a journalist & educator. Her great grandfather, Cyrus Bustill, served with Washington’s troops during the American Revolution & helped found Philadelphia’s Free African Society. Her sister was Paul Robeson’s mother.

During the American Revolution, Cuffee Saunders (born in Guyana) was an enslaved medical assistant who served with the Patriots. He treated the wounded & purchased his freedom with his enlistment bounty. His son, Prince Saunders (pictured), a Dartmouth grad, was Haiti's attorney general.

Austin Curtis an enslaved jockey whom E. Hotaling calls the US’s “1st truly great professional athlete” was granted freedom after hiding horses from the British during the American Revolution. NC legislature added his former owner's surname in his emancipation record hence "Austin Jones" in his obit

In 1770 Crispus Attucks was the 1st martyr of the American Revolution. Son of an African father & Native American mother, he'd liberated himself from slavery & joined the multiracial ranks of northeastern mariners b4 sacrificing his life, as G.W. Williams put it, “on the altar of a people’s rights.”

John Trumbull painted this portrait of George Washington & William Lee from memory around 1780, roughly 5 years after Trumbull had served as an aide-de-camp. William Lee was a mixed-race equestrian & valet who accompanied & assisted Washington throughout the American Revolutionary War.

Black soldiers sought freedom through various means during the American Revolution. Hundreds, many of whom were self-liberated, joined the Hessian armies. About 70 of these Black American soldiers settled in Germany after the war, transforming themselves “from slaves to subjects.”

In the wake of the American Revolution, Virginia passed manumission acts which acknowledged that enslaved veterans of the Patriot army “contributed toward the establishment of American liberty and independence.” AMERICAN FOUNDERS: How People of African Descent Established Freedom in the New World

"Enslaved women’s desire for freedom did not originate with the American Revolution. However, the Revolution amplified their quest for freedom" www.cambridge.org/core/books/r...

José Andrade, born in Uruguay in 1901 (his father had freed himself from enslavement in Brazil) brought Uruguay’s national soccer team to prominence in the 1920s & "put football on the map of international sports" according to one historian. He won 2 Olympic gold medals & the 1st FIFA World Cup.

During the American Revolution, James Armistead La Fayette gathered intelligence from British troops that enabled the Patriot victory at Yorktown. Having risked his life - among thousands of Black Patriots - for the establishment of the United States, he petitioned for his freedom which was granted.

Matilda Sissieretta Jones (b. 1868 in Virginia) was a renowned opera singer who performed at the White House (multiple times), at Madison Square Garden (with Antonin Dvorak), headlined at Carnegie Hall in 1893, & toured the Caribbean, South America, & England.

Mary Silvinia Burghardt Du Bois, with her sister and infant son William - aka W. E. B. Du Bois. The Burghardts descended from a formerly enslaved ancestor who fought in the American Revolution.

Reverend George Washington Henderson, theologian, professor, principal (b. 1850 in Virginia, enslaved) graduated University of Vermont as valedictorian in 1877, was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, & attended Yale. In 1894 he wrote "1st Memorial Against Lynching" addressed to the Louisiana legislature.

Nannie Helen Burroughs, educator, entrepreneur, advocate of women’s rights, daughter of formerly enslaved parents, founded a school in Washington DC in 1901. She observed, “Education & justice are democracy’s only life insurance.”

Lemuel Haynes was a Revolutionary War veteran & the 1st Black (mixed-race) man to be ordained as a minister in the US. He argued for universal rights in his 1776 antislavery tract, Liberty Further Extended, challenging the pretense of a nation fighting for its own freedom while denying it to others.

Wifredo Lam (pictured right) was a widely celebrated 20th century artist. An Afro-Cuban painter of Chinese & Congolese ancestry, a descendant of slavery, a colleague of Pablo Picasso (pictured left), Henri Matisse, & Frida Kahlo, Lam viewed his world-renowned work as “an act of decolonization.”

In 1855 Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole went to the Crimean Peninsula to care for soldiers in wartime. She & Florence Nightingale were honored in London for their service. Seacole wrote "I am proud of [my] relationship to those poor mortals whom you once held enslaved & whose bodies America still owns."

In the 1890s Fannie Barrier Williams founded a hospital, cofounded the National Association for Colored Women, served on the Chicago Public Library board & in the Chicago Women's Club (despite threats). A champion of voting rights, she was asked to eulogize Susan B. Anthony.

Portrait of the Artist's Mother by Henry Ossawa Tanner 1897. Sarah Tanner was the matriarch of an accomplished African American family including her husband, Bishop Benjamin Tanner, daughter Dr. Halle Tanner (1st woman licensed to practice medicine in AL) & son, renowned painter Henry Ossawa Tanner

In 1841 Mary Richardson married John Jones of North Carolina. They carried free papers when they settled in Chicago & Mr. Jones established a successful tailoring business. Active in abolitionist politics & voting rights campaigns, they hosted & dressed John Brown & crew en route to Harper’s Ferry.