African Americans (Freed People)
Although the vast majority of African Americans were slaves until 1865, the relatively small free black community that began to form during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries played a very important role in African American history. The free black community established institutions such as independent black churches, schools, fraternal organizations, and mutual aid societies. Free blacks were also extremely important in the abolitionist movement. African Americans' post-emancipation hopes for full and equal citizenship were ultimately dashed; nonetheless, the freed people developed their own distinct culture and institutions that would shape black American life in the decades that followed.
Background: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
The first African Americans were transported to the Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland in the early 1600s in order to work as indentured servants on tobacco farms, similar to many European emigrants. However, throughout the 1600s, the practice gradually developed where blacks were presumed to be slaves for life rather than bound for a term of years. By the early 1700s, African slavery was established in all of the British North American colonies, north and south.
While some free blacks, such as the poet Phillis Wheatley and Boston Massacre victim Crispus Attucks, achieved some renown in colonial America, a distinct black community did not emerge until the American Revolution (1775–1783).
