Washington D.C. Lawyer Seeks Support for Monument to Honor Peter Salem & Other Blacks who Fought in Revolutionary War

Washington D.C. lawyer Maurice Barboza seeking support for Revolutionary war monument to honor Peter Salem and other freed black slaves who fought in the founding of America and whose contributions have been largely forgotten.

Maurice Barboza, a Washington D.C. lawyer, is seeking support for a Revolutionary war monument for Peter Salem, a freed slave from Framingham, MA, who fought in several battles including Bunker Hill, where historians believe he shot and killed British Maj. John Pitcairn, the Herald News said. So, why are the contributions of this valiant man and other blacks who played a big role in the nation's founding being largely ignored? Barboza is fighting to honor these fallen men and women with a monument in Washington D.C. and is asking towns in Massachusetts to pass resolutions supporting legislation recently filed in Congress that would allow the privately funded memorial to be built, the newspaper said.

The statue will honor the about 5,000 African-Americans who fought or helped during the Revolutionary War. About 1,500 of those men and women, or 30 percent, were from Massachusetts, including 14 from Framingham, according to records compiled by Barboza's organization, Liberty Fund D.C.....

Salem, for example, was documented in local historian George Quintal's "Patriots of Color," a copy of which is at the Framingham History Center. After surviving the war, Salem was forced by local laws to move back to Framingham, the home of his former owner, where he spent the remainder of his life, historians said. Although poor, "he was sort of a local celebrity," Swope said. "He used to weave baskets out of straw and sell them for a few pennies apiece in town," Wallace added. When he died, Salem was buried in a pauper's grave in what is now the Church Hill Cemetery, away from the wealthier, white residents laid to rest there.

Salem's gravesite has since been marked with a stone memorial. But other Revolutionary War heroes have been wiped from historical record, Barboza said. He remains hopeful that the flurry of recent discoveries will spur the search for more of their names and stories. Source

The story of Peter Salem's contribution to this country must be told, not hidden from our youth. We are as much ingrained in the fabric of America's existence and being that we shouldn't sit idly by and not honor the legacy of these courageous men and women. It is a real shame that their contributions aren't treated with the utmost respect they deserve, instead of wiping them from historical records.