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WGBH Forum Network Presents Patriots of Color
You can watch
video or listen to audio from
the June 16th event featuring Byron Rushing and James Oliver Horton.
The Patriots of Color Celebration derives
from the National Park Service report titled, "Patriots
of Color, 'A Peculiar Beauty and Merit' African Americans and Native
Americans at Battle Road and Bunker Hill".
Revolutionary War consultant George Quintal Jr. painstakingly uncovered
approximately 120 new minority identities, untold stories that
literally
and figuratively change the faces of the Lexington & Concord
and Bunker Hill battles. The report's concept was to revive the
neglected historical memory of those men before they were permanently
lost.
The Patriots of Color Celebration reminds the Boston community
about their enduring pluralistic heritage and will help educate
the public about the African American and Native American communities
that are often under-recognized for their ancestral contributions
to the Revolutionary War.
Looking at a Familiar Event in A New Light
"The prevailing wisdom about the Battle of Bunker Hill is
that only a handful of African American soldiers were there. After
almost three years of research George Quintal reports that there
very likely were 103 "patriots of color" at Bunker Hill
(and may have been as many as 150). If there were as many as 3000
American soldiers at that Battle, this would mean that men of color
might have been five percent of the total ..."
Alfred F. Young
Senior Research Fellow, Newberry Library, Chicago
Read the entire preface of
"Patriots of Color, 'A Peculiar Beauty and Merit' African Americans
and Native Americans at Battle Road and Bunker Hill" here
Look for Patriots
of Color, published by Eastern
National Press, in Winter 2004. For
ordering information, email Paul
Tiemann.
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