African American Presence in the American Revolution
Center for The American Idea-2002 Black History Workshop-Major W. Stevenson, Sr.

For teachers interested in conducting research on blacks in Early American military history, they should explore the following research libraries and archives accessible on the World Wide Web:

Famous Americans in the Revolutionary War
http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/k12/history/aha/blacks.html

Lord Dunmore's Proclamation
http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/k12/history/blacks/dunmore.html

The Role of African Americans in the Revolution
http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/k12/history/blacks/blacks.html

Africans in America Series
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2narr4.html

Africans in America Series Teachers Guide
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/tguide/2index.html

Africans in America Resource Bank
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/index.html

African Americans in Early American Military History
http://www.coloradocollege.edu/Dept/HY/HY243Ruiz/Research/military.html

For the general history about the role of African Americans in the Revolutionary War, one could begin their research at the Library of Congress. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ Although the LC has pamphlets relating to blacks in the war, the National Archives

http://www.gov/nara/naralibrary/guide2.html has service records as well as pension records of African American soldiers who served in the nation's wars. One could use these records to trace the lives of black soldiers and their families. Unfortunately, they often reveal the struggles black veterans experienced after their service.

The Clements Library at the University of Michigan http://www.clements.umich.edu/ is a nationally renowned archive of American Military History. This archive specializes in Early Americana with extensive holdings on British Military correspondence. Within these documents, researchers can find accounts of enslaved and freed African Americans who supported the British effort. The Clements Library also holds the papers of Thomas Clarkson, a leading British abolitionist who worked with Black Loyalists to found the Sierra Leone Colony. The Schoff Collection specializes in Civil War manuscripts and lists accounts of blacks who served in the Union army.

The Black Cultural Center of Nova Scotia has some holdings about Black Loyalists who settled in Nova Scotia after the American Revolution. Most of the collections on this subject, however, are held at the Public Archives of Nova Scotia and the National Archives of Canada http://www.archives.ca/index.html

United States Colored Troops in the Civil War
http://www.coax.net/people/lwf/data.html