African Founders

by David Hackett Fischer

First published 2022

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African Founders traces the experiences and achievements of enslaved Africans and their descendants across the regional cultures of British North America and the United States. It examines the knowledge, labour, religious traditions, family strategies and civic institutions that people carried from different parts of Africa and developed under radically unequal conditions.

Organised by region and grounded in writings and testimony from Black historical actors, the book argues that people subjected to slavery did more than endure or resist an oppressive system. They built communities, challenged exclusions and enlarged American understandings of liberty, equality and participation from the colonial period through emancipation.

Historical Periods

Emancipation and Reconstruction1863–1877 CE Slavery in Revolutionary America1763–1783 CE Slavery in Colonial British America1619–1763 Free Black Communities and Institutions1776–1865