Black Patriots Project

Co-Directors: Jane Ailes and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

The Patriots of Color project was established to identify persons of color who served the Continental cause in the American Revolution. The project’s beginnings are rooted in the discovery of Professor Gates’s fourth great grandfather who served for four years in the 1st Virginia Regiment of Light Dragoons and received a pension for his service. The goal is to verify service and complexion of Patriots from each of the thirteen colonies using primarily original records such as pension and bounty land application files, muster and pay rolls, lists of troops, court records, legislative records, etc. These documents often reveal fascinating details about the service experience as well as life before and after the war. At project end, data will be published in hard copy and as an online database. Funding for this project has been provided by Richard Gilder and the Gilder Lehrman Foundation, David Roux, Joseph Dooley and the SAR, the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute, and the Inkwell Foundation.