1Samuel McCulloch
Samuel McCulloch, a freed slave, was the first Texian soldier to be wounded during the Texas Revolution, in 1835. A law later prohibited freed slaves from residing in the Republic of Texas but specifically excluded McCulloch, his family, and his descendants in recognition of his service.
2Henry Brown
Henry "Box" Brown successfully escaped slavery in 1849 by mailing himself in a wood crate from Virginia to the free state of Pennsylvania.
3Bill Richmond
Bill Richmond was a black slave who fought alongside the British during the Revolutionary War. He later moved to England where he became one of the world's most famous bare-knuckle boxers. An articulate, respected man, he married a white woman and attended George IV’s coronation.
4Quilombo Dos Palmares
Quilombo Dos Palmares was a community of fugitive slaves in Brazil that resisted Portuguese efforts to destroy it for almost a century. One estimate places the population of Palmares in the 1690s at around 20,000 inhabitants.
5William Lee
William “Billy” Lee was George Washington’s slave and personal valet. He fought alongside Washington through the entire American Revolutionary War and was the only slave of Washington's who was emancipated immediately upon his death.
6Squanto
Before the Mayflower, Squanto was kidnapped, sold into slavery in Spain, and escaped back to North America, only to find his entire tribe wiped out from disease. The site he later helped the Pilgrams settle at was the summer village of his tribe, Plymoth Rock.
7Roman slaves
Roman slaves wore collars of iron with messages like a modern dog collar, for example, this one, which reads "I have run away; hold me. When you shall have returned me to my master, Zoninus, you will receive a solidus."
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8Mary Bowser
Mary Bowser was a freed slave with a Quaker education and a photographic memory, posed as a slow-witted slave to spy for the Union in Confederate President Jefferson Davis' household through much of the Civil War.
9Wheeling Gaunt
Wheeling Gaunt was a slave who bought his and his family's freedom in 1845 before moving to Yellow Springs, Ohio. At the time of his death, he bequeathed a large portion of his land and estate to the village under the condition that each widow be given flour annually, which continues to this day.
10Onesimus
An African slave named Onesimus taught colonists in Boston how to inoculate themselves against smallpox. The treatment had been common in China and Africa for centuries.
