18th-century American slaves

Sarah (Sally) Hemings (c. 1773–1835) was an enslaved woman of mixed race owned by President Thomas Jefferson. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that Jefferson had a long-term sexual relationship with Hemings, and historians now broadly agree that he was the father of her six children. Hemings was a half-sister of Jefferson's wife, Martha Jefferson (née Wayles). Four of Hemings's children survived into adulthood. Hemings died in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1835.

Seymour Burr (1754/1762–1837) was an African-American slave in the Connecticut Colony in the North American British Colonies and United States. Owned by the brother of Colonel Aaron Burr, who was also named Seymour, he was known only as Seymour (sometimes spelled Seymore) until he escaped and used the surname Burr to enlist in the British Army in the early days of the American Revolution. The British promised the personal freedom of any African-American slave who enlisted or escaped to fight against the Continental Army, and Burr wanted more than anything to be free. However, he was quickly captured and forcibly returned to his owner.

Elizabeth Freeman (c.1744 – December 28, 1829), also known as Bet, Mum Bett, or MumBet, was the first enslaved African American to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling, in Freeman's favor, found slavery to be inconsistent with the 1780 Massachusetts State Constitution. Her suit, Brom and Bett v. Ashley (1781), was cited in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court appellate review of Quock Walker's freedom suit. When the court upheld Walker's freedom under the state's constitution, the ruling was considered to have implicitly ended slavery in Massachusetts.

Kunta Kinte (KOON-tah KIN-tay; c.– c.) is a fictional character in the 1976 novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family by American author Alex Haley. Kunta Kinte was based on family oral tradition accounts of one of Haley's ancestors, a Gambian man who was born around 1767, enslaved, and taken to America where he died around 1822. Haley said that his account of Kunta's life in Roots is a mixture of fact and fiction.

George Washington Buckner (December 1, 1855 – February 17, 1943) was an American physician and diplomat. He was United States minister to Liberia from 1913 to 1915.

Titus Cornelius, also known as Titus, Tye, and famously as Colonel Tye (c.– 1780), was a slave of African descent in the Province of New Jersey who escaped from his master and fought as a Black Loyalist during the American Revolutionary War; he was known for his leadership and fighting skills. He fought with a volunteer corps of escaped Virginia Colony slaves in the Ethiopian Regiment, and he led the Black Brigade associators. Tye died from tetanus from a musket wound in the wrist following a short siege in September 1780 against Captain Joshua Huddy. He was one of the most feared and effective guerrilla leaders opposing the American patriot forces in central New Jersey.

Crispus Attucks (c. – March 5, 1770) was an American whaler, sailor, and stevedore of African and Native American descent, who is traditionally regarded as the first person killed in the Boston Massacre, and as a result the first American killed in the American Revolution.

Charity Still (c. 1775 – 1857) was a matriarch of the American abolition movement and witness to the development of the Underground Railroad.

Zamba Zembola (born c. 1780) is the supposed author of an 1847 slave narrative, The Life and Adventures of Zamba, an African Negro King; and his Experience of Slavery in South Carolina, which describes his kidnapping and 40 years of labor as a slave on a plantation in the U.S. state of South Carolina. The work was edited by Peter Neilson, a Scottish abolitionist. Some scholars believe the book is not a genuine slave narrative, but is fiction written by Neilson. Neilson refused to produce Zamba for inspection by anyone else.

Elizabeth "Betty" Hemings (c.1735 – 1807) was an enslaved mixed-race woman in colonial Virginia. With her master, planter John Wayles, she had six children, including Sally Hemings. These children were three-quarters white, and, following the condition of their mother, they were enslaved from birth; they were half-siblings to Wayles's daughter, Martha Jefferson. After Wayles died, the Hemings family and some 120 other slaves were inherited, along with 11,000 acres and £4,000 debt, as part of his estate by his daughter Martha and her husband Thomas Jefferson.