Finding Freedom Big Ideas

What are primary sources, and how did historians and museum curators use them to help understand Andrew, Deborah, Eve, Jack and London’s lives? 

The men, women, and children of African descent living in British North America on the eve of the American Revolution were diverse in many ways.  

From North to South, slavery was practiced throughout the American colonies. It shaped colonial laws and the colonial economy, and it was also shaped by them.  

How did people of African descent resist slavery? Using their intelligence, their bodies, their words, and whatever tools they could find. 

Some of the same people who preached liberty and equality held their fellow human beings as slaves. How, and why, did they justify this? 

Choosing who to support in the American Revolution was not as easy as we may think. For people of African descent, the desire for freedom might lead them to either side. 

People of African descent served as soldiers, sailors, spies, camp followers and more over the course of the Revolutionary War. Others tried, or had no choice but, to stay out of it altogether. 

The end of the Revolutionary War brought both hope and frustration for people of African descent, regardless of which side they had supported.