Establishing Freedom In the New World.

• Position: American Founders: How People of African Descent Established Freedom in the New World - Book review

While conventional history tends to confine African-Americans to the roles they played during the periods of antebellum slavery and the civil rights movement, Africans actually preceded the English to the New World by a century and arrived in the Americas in numbers that far exceeded European migrants up until 1820.

In American Founders: How People of African Descent Established Freedom in the New World (New-South Books), Christina Proenza-Coles--who holds a dual doctorate in sociology and history from the New School for Social Research--chronicles how black people developed and defended New World settlements, undermined slavery, and championed freedom throughout the hemisphere from the 16th century on.

African-descended people contributed to every facet of American history, including as explorers, settlers, soldiers, sailors, lawyers, litigants...