Free Negroes

Elizabeth Key Grinstead (or Greenstead) (1630 – January 20, 1665) was one of the first black people of the Thirteen Colonies to sue for freedom from slavery and win. Key won her freedom and that of her infant son John Grinstead on July 21, 1656, in the colony of Virginia.

Wentworth Cheswell (11 April 1746 – 8 March 1817) was an American assessor, auditor, Justice of the Peace, teacher and Revolutionary War veteran in Newmarket, New Hampshire. He was of mixed race (one-quarter African and three-quarters European) and was listed in the census as white. Elected as town constable in 1768, he was elected to other positions, serving in local government every year but one until his death.

Benjamin "Pap" Singleton (1809 – February 17, 1900) was an American activist and businessman best known for his role in establishing African American settlements in Kansas. A former slave from Tennessee who escaped to freedom in Ontario, Canada in 1846, he soon returned to the United States, settling for a period in Detroit, Michigan. He became a noted abolitionist, community leader, and spokesman for African-American civil rights.

The Venerable Pierre Toussaint (27 June 1766 – June 30, 1853) was a former slave from the French colony of Saint-Domingue who was brought to New York City by his owners in 1787. There he eventually gained his freedom and became a noted philanthropist to the poor of the city. Freed in 1807 after the death of his mistress, Pierre took the surname of "Toussaint" in honor of the hero of the Haitian Revolution which established that nation.

Thomas "Tom" Molineaux (23 March 1784 – 4 August 1818), sometimes spelled Molyneaux, was an African-American bare-knuckle boxer and possibly a former slave. He spent much of his career in Great Britain and Ireland, where he had some notable successes. He arrived in England in 1809 and started his fighting career there in 1810. It was his two fights against Tom Cribb, widely viewed as the Champion of England, that brought fame to Molineaux, although he lost both contests. His prizefighting career ended in 1815. After a tour that took him to Scotland and Ireland, he died in Galway, Ireland in 1818, aged 34.

Dred Scott (1799 – September 17, 1858) was an enslaved African American man in the United States who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, popularly known as the "Dred Scott case". Scott claimed that he and his wife should be granted their freedom because they had lived in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory for four years, where slavery was illegal and their laws said that slaveholders gave up their rights to slaves if they stayed for an extended period.

Solomon Northup (born July 10, 1807 or 1808) was an American abolitionist and the primary author of the memoir Twelve Years a Slave. A free-born African American from New York, he was the son of a freed slave and a free woman of color. A farmer and a professional violinist, Northup had been a landowner in Hebron, New York. In 1841, he was offered a traveling musician's job and went to Washington, D.C. (where slavery was legal); there he was drugged, kidnapped, and sold as a slave. He was shipped to New Orleans, purchased by a planter, and held as a slave for 12 years in the Red River region of Louisiana, mostly in Avoyelles Parish. He remained a slave until he met a Canadian working on his plantation who helped get word to New York, where state law provided aid to free New York citizens who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. His family and friends enlisted the aid of the Governor of New York, Washington Hunt, and Northup regained his freedom on January 3, 1853.

Juliette Noel Toussaint (c. 1786 – May 14, 1851) was a Haitian-American philanthropist and freed slave who collaborated closely with her husband Pierre Toussaint in helping the poor and doing charitable works in downtown New York. Her husband was declared a Venerable in 1996 by Pope John Paul II.

Sally Seymour (died 3 April 1824), was an American pastry chef and restaurateur.

Scipio Vaughan (1784–1840) was an African-American artisan and slave who inspired a "back to Africa" movement among some of his offspring to connect with their roots in Africa, specifically the Yoruba of West Africa in the early 19th century. After gaining his freedom, he spent the latter part of his life in the United States and started the movement with his immediate family members in his final moments. Several generations of Scipio's descendants are dispersed across three continents where they mostly live or lived, except for occasional cousin reunions, which includes people from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and Tanzania in Africa; Jamaica and Barbados in the Caribbean; the United States and Canada in North America; and the United Kingdom in Europe.