Agrippa Hull enlisted at age 18 in Colonel Ebenezer Sprout's Massachusetts regiment to fight the British Empire in the war for independence. He would spend the majority of nearly seven years service assigned as an aide to Colonel Tadeusz Kosciuszko. The lifelong bond between the Polish aristocrat turned freedom fighter, and the free man of African descent from Massachusetts, began at West Point, where Kosciuszko had overseen fortifications that closed the last British hope to take control of the Hudson Valley and split the revolting colonies.

Almost anywhere George Washington went during the Revolutionary War, there was a skilled, muscular, athletic horseman by his side: William Lee, a man Washington had purchased for 61 British pounds and 15 shillings in 1768.

Among the many historical events memorialized on September 11 is the Battle of Brandywine in 1777, a defeat for the Continental forces, but a significant turning point in the development of a capable United States Army.

While detailing the substantial participation by Americans of African descent in the Continental armies, its worth asking -- what was in it for them? What did they get out of it in the end? Lerone Bennett, Jr., in Before The Mayflower, refers to the early years of Independence as "the Black Pioneer period.