In 1775, Americans responded to the call for liberty, taking up arms against their oppressors and fighting the first major battles of the Revolution south of New York. Hundreds of these soldiers, however, were Black men fighting for, rather than against, King George III.  

Reportedly wearing sashes that declared “Liberty for Slaves,” members of the "Ethiopian Regiment"—Ethiopian being a synonym for Black—charged into combat against their former masters, determined to win their freedom. They were drawn to the cause by the continent’s first emancipation proclamation, a document predating President Abraham Lincoln’s famous edict by nearly a century. 

African Americans arrived on Virginia’s shores in 1619, only a dozen years after the first white settlers. By the onset