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Article

ʿAbd al-Muʾmin  

Allen J. Fromherz

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

builder of the Almohad Empire and great Moroccan military leader and able administrator, led the Almohad movement for tawhid, absolute monotheistic unity, after the death of the Mahdi Ibn Tumart, the Almohad founder, in c. 1130. His full name was ʿAbd al-Muʾmin ibn ʿAli ibn ʿAlwi bin Yaʿla al-Kumi Abu Muhammad.

After defeating the Almoravid Empire at Marrakech, he established the administrative and military foundations of the Almohad state while securing a caliphal succession for his descendants, the Muʾminid dynasty. In a matter of decades ʿAbd al-Muʾmin and his followers transformed the Almohads from a vigorous but vulnerable ideological movement in the small Atlas Mountain town of Tinmal to one of the largest and most successful Islamic empires in North African and Andalusian history.

Effectively an outsider ʿAbd al Muʾmin s ancestry was different from the noble Masmuda ethnic groups that made up the core of the Almohad ...

Article

Badr, al-Jamali, Abu al-Najm  

Kurt J. Werthmuller

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

commander of the Fatimid armies in Egypt and Syria, was the first in a sixty-year era of Muslim viziers and military rulers of Armenian origin, a position he assumed following his restoration of order in the Fatimid lands after a period of political and social turmoil. Nothing is known about his birth or childhood, save the patronymic Ibn (son of) ʿAbdallah, which is sometimes included in his full name and title. He was father to at least two sons: al-Awhad, whom he likely executed after a brief rebellion, and al-Afdal, who succeeded him as military vizier. The earliest references to Badr’s life begin as an adolescent Mamluk (slave-soldier) in the service of a Fatimid governor of Aleppo around 1020 This official ʿAziz al Dawla had apparently begun recruiting Mamluks into his military from among those Anatolian communities that retained a sense of their Armenian identity but had in fact ...

Article

Baker, Brister (Bristol)  

Kane Cross

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
28 February 2013

was possibly born in Connecticut, but other than that he was born into slavery, nothing is known about his parents or his early years. Baker enlisted to fight in the Revolutionary War on 24 May 1777, in the town of New Haven. His name appears as both Bristol and Brister in multiple documents, presumably due to his being a slave before enlisting in the army. His discharge papers list the name as Brister.

Baker served during the years 1777–1783 until he was discharged in 1783; his discharge letter was signed and approved by General George Washington, the commander of the Continental Army, and does not indicate that he was a black soldier. It seems Connecticut recruiters had a difficult time bringing in soldiers, because by March 1777 Brigadier General Samuel Parsons reported that of the nine Connecticut regiments only two had 250 men far short of the ...

Article

Bowles, Charles  

Floyd Jr. Ogburn

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

soldier and evangelist, was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His father was an African servant and his mother was the daughter of Colonel Morgan, an officer in the rifle corps during the American Revolutionary War. As an infant Bowles remained with his father but dwelled with a foster parent in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, until age twelve. After the death of his foster parent, he lived with a Tory family until fourteen, when he joined the Colonial artillery as a waiter to an officer. Two years later he enlisted in the American army and served until the war concluded.

The war over, Bowles traveled to New Hampshire and married Mary Corliss his cousin and the granddaughter of Colonel Morgan Soon after marriage he was baptized and joined the Calvinist Baptist Church in Wentworth New Hampshire Finding the Calvinist denomination too inflexible he later converted to the Free Will Baptist embracing ...

Article

Brace, Jeffrey  

Kari J. Winter

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

slave, sailor, soldier, and farmer, was born Boyrereau Brinch, the seventh of eight children (four boys and four girls) born to Whryn Brinch, the son of Yarrah Brinch, and of Whryn Douden Wrogan, the daughter of Grassee Youghgon. He lived in the city of Deauyah in the kingdom of Bow-woo, which was probably situated in the Niger River basin, in the area that would later become Mali. In 1758 when he was around the age of sixteen Boyrereau was abducted by slave traders transported to Barbados and sold to Captain Isaac Mills of New Haven Connecticut who trained him for British naval service Like thousands of other slaves and freed Africans in the Caribbean Brace as he would come to be called years later after his manumission This may have been an anglicized version of Brinch was forced to labor aboard ship during ...

Article

Brown, James  

Glenn Allen Knoblock

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

a sailor during the War of 1812, served with Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry in the Battle of Lake Erie. A native of Maryland, Brown was a free man and resident of Somerset, Pennsylvania, when he married his wife Elizabeth, also from Maryland, in April 1812. Although details are lacking, Brown may have served in a local militia unit in 1812–1813 before being sent to serve in Perry's newly formed Lake Erie squadron in the spring of 1813. When Perry arrived at Erie, Pennsylvania, to finalize the construction of the twenty-gun brigs Lawrence and Niagara the mainstays of his fleet he found that he was severely lacking in manpower and requested more men from his superior Commodore Isaac Chauncey After some dispute and delay a disappointed Perry finally received 150 men commenting that The men that came are a motley set blacks Soldiers and boys Altoff ...

Article

Brown, Robert  

Glenn Allen Knoblock

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

a soldier and sailor during the War of 1812, was born in Pennsylvania. At the beginning of the war he likely served in a Pennsylvania militia regiment, but sometime after March 1813 he was sent for duty at sea aboard the Lake Erie squadron under the command of Oliver Hazard Perry. Short on manpower during the outfitting of his fleet at Erie, Pennsylvania, including the twenty-gun brigs Lawrence and Niagara, Perry was forced to plead with his superior, Commodore Isaac Chauncey, to send him more men. After much wrangling, Chauncey finally sent Perry 150 men in two separate drafts, including African Americans Robert Brown, Jesse Walls, and James Brown Unfortunately Perry was unhappy with the caliber of the men he received complaining to Chauncey that The men that came are a motley set blacks Soldiers and boys I cannot think that you saw them after they ...

Article

Chappell, Edward Carter, Jr.  

Timothy Nicholson

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

a Revolutionary War soldier, was born Edward Carter in Colchester, Connecticut, to Edward (Ned) and Jenny Carter. Edward had six siblings, Aaron, Jacob, Asher, Esau, Sally, and an unidentified child who died in 1763. Ned, Jenny, and Edward were documented slaves of Mr. Jonathan Kellogg of Colchester, as were three of Edward's six siblings. Some of the remaining siblings may also have been slaves. Edward's father served in the armed forces at Crown Point during the campaign of 1755 in the French and Indian War, earning his emancipation as a result. It is possible that Ned Carter served on the behalf of Mr. Kellogg, a common practice at the time, but there are no records stating that this was so. The children were not all owned by Jonathan Kellogg, but divided among his sons. Ned also served during the American Revolution from 1777 to 1783 ...

Article

Charlton, Samuel  

M. Kelly Beauchamp

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

slave and soldier in the Continental army, is a person about whom little early information is available. Nothing is known of his parents, childhood, or young life. What is known is that Charlton served as a teamster, a fairly common assignment for African American soldiers. States tended to use African American troops, particularly in the early years of the war, as unarmed privates to serve the functions of orderlies, servants, or regimental musicians or else consigned them to logistical functions. Charlton, however, despite being a teamster, often found himself in combat situations.

The Continental army raised by the Continental Congress was multiracial, but soon after George Washington took command in the spring of 1775 he ordered recruiting officers not to enlist African Americans. In a council of war on 8 October 1775 Washington and other prominent officers decided unanimously to bar all slaves and by a wide majority all ...

Article

Cozzens, Richard A.  

Shennette Garrett-Scott

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 May 2013

Revolutionary War soldier and fifer, was born in Africa and brought to work in the British colonies as a slave. Some sources assert that he was a free man when he enlisted in the Continental Army, but it is more likely that he secured his freedom in exchange for enlistment. His name does not appear on the list of enslaved recruits to the First Rhode Island Regiment compiled by historian Lorenzo Greene in his seminal 1952Journal of Negro History article Some Observations on the Black Regiment of Rhode Island in the American Revolution which may explain why historians and writers consider Cozzens a free person Greene admits that the primary source records are incomplete In addition like other enslaved recruits Cozzens would be emancipated if he passed muster and then served through the end of the war Cozzens may have been enslaved by members of the distinguished ...

Article

Cruse, Harold  

Yusuf Nuruddin

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
27 April 2010
Published online:
30 September 2012

Harold Cruse (8 March 1916–20 March 2005), an iconoclastic social critic and a largely self-educated cultural historian, achieved distinction as the preeminent African American dissident public intellectual of the 1960s. Although he authored several books, his reputation rests largely on his monumental work The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967), a flawed yet brilliant, imaginative, sweeping, and provocative polemic. A thematically united collection of essays, Crisis presents a withering assessment of the black intelligentsia for its self-defeating embrace of both liberal and radical integrationist politics, especially its involvement in the Communist Party, of which Cruse was once a member.

Within the Communist Party and other leftist organizations black political interests according to Cruse historically have been subordinated to white political interests including Jewish and white ethnic nationalisms As a remedy Cruse calls upon the black intelligentsia to abandon its bankrupt integrationist strategies and embrace its ...

Article

Dabney, Austin  

Robert Scott Davis

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

Revolutionary War veteran, was born a slave in Wake County, North Carolina. Not much is known about Dabney's life before the war. Several factors made both slavery and freedom for African Americans especially peculiar institutions in the environment of Revolutionary War–era Georgia, from which Dabney emerged. Slaves were initially prohibited when the colony was founded in 1733. Ethnic groups such as the Continental Protestants at Ebenezer, known as Salzburgers, and the Highland Scots at Darien supported this prohibition until Georgia's trustees, under extreme public pressure, finally allowed slavery in 1749. The Quakers at Wrightsborough never allowed slavery among their membership. The supporters of the American Revolution in Darien issued a declaration against slavery as late as 1775 although this effort was not continued after the war The War of Independence created unusual circumstances for African Americans both those who were free and those who were slaves ...

Article

Dailey, London  

Glenn Allen Knoblock

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

Revolutionary War soldier and civic leader, is a man about whom few early personal details are known. Probably a former slave he was a free man and resident of New Hampshire when he joined the Continental army in July 1779 from the town of Gilmanton.

Dailey's service in the Revolutionary War mirrored that of many other blacks in New England, both slaves and free men, including such soldiers as Lambert Latham, Oliver Cromwell (1752–1853), and his fellow New Hampshire resident Prince Whipple. Whether or not Dailey was a free man before he joined the army is an open question. He may have already been a free man, or he could have used the bounty money he received for enlisting to purchase his own freedom, a method by which many slaves throughout New England gained their freedom during the war.

Once he joined the Continental army ...

Article

DeBaptiste, John  

Kathryn L. Beard

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

soldier, sailor, and shipbuilder during the War of Independence, was born free in the British colony of St. Kitts of mixed race parentage. Little is known about his early life. Prior to adulthood he became literate, fluent in French and English, and he trained as a skilled craftsman in building dwellings and ships. As a free person of color in one of the older sugar colonies, he would have benefited from an increasing emigration of whites and, by 1745, a plantation system characterized by a high level of absenteeism by white landowners. These factors contributed to the growth of a small colored elite, financed largely by credit given by white relatives but still facing legal and de facto discrimination. For example, until 1830 the laws of St Kitts prohibited free people of color from attending the colony s few public schools although they paid taxes to ...

Article

Dickinson, Castor  

Glenn Allen Knoblock

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

French and Indian War and American Revolution soldier, was the slave of the leader of Robert's Rangers, Captain Robert Rogers. Castor, whose first name is also listed in military records as “Sesor” or “Caezar” and his last name sometimes as “Deckson,” is a man about whom little is known; his origin and the details of his early life have not been recorded. Castor's owner, Robert Rogers, was raised in the area of what is now Concord, New Hampshire, and though he was unscrupulous in character he was a renowned frontier fighter. When and where Rogers acquired Castor Dickinson is unknown, as is Dickinson's circumstances of servitude and place of residence.

While no known records prove that Dickinson accompanied Rogers on his frontier operations with British forces at Halifax and Ticonderoga in 1757 and 1758 it is nevertheless quite possible that he did so During these same years in ...

Article

Duplex, Prince, Sr.  

Charles Rosenberg

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
29 February 2012

one of at least 289 people of African descent who enlisted in the Connecticut Line during the American Revolutionary War, was born in Southington, Connecticut, where by the laws of that time he was the property of Samuel Riggs, a status inherited from his mother. He was baptized on 18 July 1756. Historical sketches published in 1875 mention that he had a brother named Peter, whose later life is unknown.

Prince's mother and father were later assigned as servants for Reverend Benjamin Chapman, pastor of Southington Congregational Church, who had married Riggs's daughter Abigail in 1756. When Riggs died in 1770, probate of his property listed “a negro boy Prince £50,” who presumably was part of Abigail's share of her father's estate. The young men's parents may be the Peter and Hannah initially bequeathed by Riggs to his wife The entire family eventually ...

Article

Fannu  

Osire Glacier

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

a princess of the Almoravid dynasty who dressed as a man and fought the Almohads during the conquest of Marrakech in 1147, was the daughter of Umar Ben Yintan. Very little is known about the life of Princess Fannu. What little information there is deals primarily with the nature of her death. An examination of the culture and politics of the region during this time provides further information and clarification on the nature of her life and death.

Fannu lived in the Almoravid palace during the first half of the twelfth century a period when the Almoravid Empire was in decline Considering that women played an important role in Almoravid society in general and within the royal palace in particular it is entirely possible that Fannu was visible and influential in the royal court The Almoravid dynasty s founder Yusuf ibn Tashfin and his wife Zaynab Nafzawiyya governed alongside ...

Article

Fraunces, Samuel  

John Howard Smith

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

tavern owner and innkeeper in New York City and Philadelphia, was probably born in the French West Indies. There seems to be some controversy regarding his race, as his nickname, “Black Sam,” would indicate an African American identity, while some primary sources imply that he was either white or a Mulatto. Historians are generally agreed, however, that Fraunces was African American. Much of what is known about him comes from his 1785 petition for compensation from Congress for services rendered during the American War of Independence, letters from George Washington, and an obituary in the 13 October 1795 issue of the Gazette of the United States. He owned an inn in New York City in 1755 and the following year obtained a license to operate an ordinary which was a tavern serving meals as well as the usual ales and spirits At this time he was married ...

Article

Freeman, Jordan  

M. Kelly Beauchamp

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

a soldier in the American Revolution, was the personal servant of Lieutenant Colonel William Ledyard. Freeman served primarily as an orderly while Ledyard was in command of Fort Griswold at New London, Connecticut. A British force under the command of Brigadier General Benedict Arnold on 6 September 1781 besieged the fort. Freeman demonstrated an exceptional degree of courage during the fighting of what came to be known as the Battle of Groton Heights.

The operations undertaken by Arnold were part of a larger British strategy to impede George Washington's efforts to encircle Cornwallis at Yorktown by using diversionary forces to draw Americans out Arnold s immediate objective was to seize the port of New London The British force succeeded in burning New London and a defensive force from the town drew back to Fort Griswold on the Groton side of the Thames River The small American force numbered ...

Article

Fry, Windsor  

Joseph W. Becton

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

a soldier in the American Revolution, was born in East Greenwich, Kent County, Rhode Island. Little is known of his parents. In 1781 Fry was recorded as twenty-two years old, about five feet ten and a half inches tall, with black hair and “mustee complexion,” a description that in his time implied that he was of mixed black and Indian parentage. He worked as a laborer, and in March 1775 he enlisted in the army. The war had not yet begun. He was probably in the Kentish Guard as a private in Captain Thomas Holden's company. The Kentish Guard was formed in 1774 with members like James Varnum, Christopher Green, Nathanael Green, and Samuel Ward Jr. The Kentish Guard was with Captain James Varnum as Rhode Islanders prepared for war. On 3 April 1775 a general muster was held Fifteen hundred men reported for duty in ...