page_title: History of slavery in North Carolina
section_title: Notable slaves and freed slaves
hierarchical_section_title: History of slavery in North Carolina / Notable slaves and freed slaves
caption_attribution_description: English: "Uncle Marian, a slave of great notoriety, of North Carolina," ambrotype daguerreotype, by unknown photographer. Half-length formal portrait. Identification from manuscript note found underneath the plate. Image courtesy of the Randolph Linsly Simpson African-American Collection, Beinecke Rare Book &amp; Manuscript Library, Yale University.[1]
context_page_description: Slavery was legally practiced in the Province of North Carolina and the state of North Carolina until January 1, 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Prior to statehood, there were 41,000 enslaved African-Americans in the Province of North Carolina in 1767. By 1860, the number of slaves in the state of North Carolina was 331,059, about one third of the total population of the state. In 1860, there were nineteen counties in North Carolina where the number of slaves was larger than the free white population. During the antebellum period the state of North Carolina passed several laws to protect the rights of slave owners while disenfranchising the rights of slaves. There was a constant fear amongst white slave owners in North Carolina of slave revolts from the time of the American Revolution. Despite their circumstances, some North Carolina slaves and freed slaves distinguished themselves as artisans, soldiers during the Revolution, religious leaders, and writers.
context_section_description: John Chavis was a free black educator and Presbyterian minister in the American South during the early 19th century. Born in Oxford, NC, he fought for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He was the first African American to graduate from college.  He studied with John Witherspoon at the College of New Jersey and finished his studies at Liberty Hall Academy in Virginia, where he was licensed to preach. Later while working in Raleigh, North Carolina, he established a private school that was highly regarded and attended by both white and black students.)
  Thomas Peters, Enslaved in the Province of North Carolina, Peters emancipated himself and joined British forces during the American Revolutionary War. He served as a Black Loyalist in the Black Company of Pioneers in New York and was evacuated with British forces and many other former slaves at the end of the war. Thomas Peters has been called the "first African-American hero". Like Elijah Johnson and Joseph Jenkins Roberts of Liberia, Peters is considered the African-American founding father of a nation, in this case, Sierra Leone.
  Jonathan Overton was a black soldier from North Carolina who served under George Washington at the Battle of Yorktown.
  Ned Griffin was a slave who served in the American Revolution for his owner William Kitchen.  The North Carolina General Assembly freed him and gave him the right to vote, even though William Kitchen had refused.
  Slave James of Perquimans County, North Carolina served as a sailor on a Continental ship.  He was captured twice by the British.  After the war, he was freed by the Perquimans county court.
  Harriet Ann Jacobs was an African-American writer who escaped from slavery in Edenton, North Carolina and was later freed. She became an abolitionist speaker and reformer.
  Moses Grandy was an African-American author, abolitionist, and, for more than the first four decades of his life, an enslaved person in Camden County, North Carolina.
  Hannah Bond was an American writer who escaped from slavery in North Carolina about 1857 and went to the North.
  Lunsford Lane was a formerly enslaved African-American entrepreneur from North Carolina who bought freedom for himself and his family. He became a vocal opponent of slavery and wrote a slave narrative autobiography.
  Omar ibn Said was a writer and Islamic scholar, born and educated in what is now Senegal in West Africa, who was enslaved and transported to the United States in 1807.  He escaped from a cruel master in Charleston, South Carolina, and journeyed to Fayetteville, North Carolina. There he was recaptured and later sold to James Owen. Sa'id lived into his mid-nineties and was still enslaved at the time of his death in 1864.
  Abraham Galloway was an American escaped slave, abolitionist, mason, spy for the union army, women's suffragist, and state Senator in North Carolina.
caption: Omar Ibn Said
exif: {}