In honor of Black History Month, Glenn featured a four-part series on America’s black founders. America has a rich tradition of strong men and women playing prominent roles in the founding of our country — including patriotic black Americans. But you won’t hear about them in school. It simply doesn’t fit with the progressive narrative. Political correctness has watered down and left out the stories of these patriots with strong moral character and courage. It’s past time to set the record straight.
You want to heal our land? It starts with telling the truth. This four-part series puts a laser focus on Americans that might otherwise be lost to history, highlighting how they stood shoulder to shoulder with fellow patriots. Join Glenn as he cracks open the history books to give these great founders their due and helps preserve the amazing stories of America’s black founders.
Part II: Peter Salem
Patriotism was on the rise and the sentiment was no respecter of station or color, just ask Peter Salem. Born into slavery in 1750 in Framingham, Massachusetts to Jeremiah Belknap, Salem was later sold to Lawson Bruckminster --- a man who would become a major in the Continental Army.
Taxation without representation took its toll on everyone, causing a shift in loyalties --- and sometimes the act of a few can inspire the masses. One such event for Peter Salem was the Boston Tea Party. So moved by what he had witnessed, Salem pleaded with Bruckminster to let him to fight alongside his fellow patriots. Touched by Salem's devotion, Bruckminster granted the slave his freedom, immediately allowing him to join the Massachusetts Minutemen.
Salem had proven himself a capable spy and learned weeks in advance that the British were planning to attack and take rebel supplies. Because of this intelligence, the rebels moved their supplies and were ready and waiting when the British showed up. The ensuing battle in Lexington marked the beginning of the revolution where the ‘shot heard round the world’ was fired.
Salem later fought at Bunker Hill and the battle of Saratoga Springs, becoming a revolutionary war hero. He lived out his days in Framingham as a free man and cane weaver. Peter Salem was so revered that his final resting place was among white people at the Framingham cemetery, an unheard of honor for a one-time slave.
The town also placed a memorial stone over Salem's gravesite, calling him "a soldier of the Revolution."
At a time when we are so divided, how much of a difference would it make in places like Baltimore, Ferguson and Chicago to know the truth of our Black Founders? To know we have stood shoulder to shoulder as brothers and sisters before, even back to the founding of this great nation?
The story of Peter Salem adds further evidence that the founding of America was truly revolutionary.
Featured Image: The Frederick Douglass Statue in Emancipation Hall at the Capitol Visitors Center, at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)