Conventional histories of North America focus almost exclusively on white Europeans, giving few African figures leading roles in the story until the Civil War era. As Proenza-Coles shows in her groundbreaking and revelatory account, African-descended people played key parts in every stage of the nation’s evolution. In fact, African residents preceded the English to North America by a century and outnumbered European migrants there until roughly 1820. Drawing on hundreds of sources, Proenza-Coles, who holds a dual doctorate in sociology and history from the New School, introduces a huge cast of previously unknown Black explorers, conquistadores, settlers, soldiers, sailors, entrepreneurs, generals, cowboys, pirates, professors, and more, and shows how this overlooked population left an indelible stamp on the nation we have become.
