Join the Newport Historical Society for a talk by author John Rees titled “They Were Good Soldiers: African Americans Serving in the Continental Army, 1775-1783,” on Thursday, October 10, 2019 at 5:30pm at the Newport Historical Society, 82 Touro Street, Newport, RI.

African Americans, free and enslaved, served from the first action at Lexington to the end of the War for Independence, for the most part in integrated military units, alongside their white fellow-soldiers. John Rees will present an overview of their service, before focusing on black soldiers in the Rhode Island regiments, with an emphasis on correcting several long-held myths. African American women with the army will also be featured, as will the only known wartime letter written by a black Revolutionary soldier.  

John U. Rees has been writing about common soldiers’ experiences in the War for American Independence for over 30 years, on subjects ranging from battle studies, army food, and the soldier’s burden, to army wagons and watercraft, campaign shelters, Continental Army conscription, and women with the army. His work has appeared in the ALHFAM Bulletin (Association of Living History, Farm, and Agricultural Museums), Journal of o the American Revolution  (online),   Military  Collector & Historian, Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military,  Muzzleloader Magazine, Percussive Notes (Journal of the Percussive Arts Society), Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, and Repast (Quarterly Publication of the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor). He was for 15 years a regular columnist for the quarterly newsletter Food History News writing on soldiers’ food, wrote four entries for the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, and thirteen entries for the revised Thomson Gale edition of Boatner’s Encyclopedia of the American Revolutions.

“They Were Good Soldiers: African Americans Serving in the Continental Army, 1775-1783,” on Thursday, October 10, 2019 at 5:30pm at the Newport Historical Society, 82 Touro Street, Newport, RI. General admission costs $5 per person, $1 for Newport Historical Society members along with retired and active duty military.

This lecture is generously sponsored by Hotel Viking.