As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, there is a tension between those who want to remember an uncomplicated past and those who would remember that freedom is a constant struggle. It’s a right that must be fought for and defended.

And amid all the hoop-la over the celebrations, the nation risks forgetting that since the War of Independence, African Americans have played a crucial role defining and expanding American liberty.

The Declaration of Independence promised “all men are created equal”. And yet when Thomas Jefferson – himself an enslaver – penned those words, there were around half a million enslaved people living in the 13 colonies.

Black Americans saw the contradictions at the heart of the Revolutionary era, and they sought to redefine liberty. During the Revolutionary War, thousands of enslaved Americans sought freedom – sometimes by joining the British, and sometimes by serving the Patriot cause.

They often used the pen, as well as the sword, to link the nation’s fight for freedom to their own. The poet Phillis Wheatley, born in west Africa and enslaved in Boston, published a poem in 1772 comparing her enslavement to tyrannical British rule. A group of Black Bostonians presented petitions to the Massachusetts legislature calling for the abolition of slavery, using the language of natural rights and words and phrases from the Declaration of Independence.

Ultimately, Black patriots were betrayed by a new nation that was founded on competing visions of freedom. For Black Americans, liberty did not just mean self-government and freedom from British rule. It also........

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