ABHM Book Club: Black Patriots and Loyalists by Alan Gilbert
We are pleased to announce ABHM’s July Book of the Month: Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence by Alan Gilbert. We invite you to join us on July 25th at 1:30 p.m. for a discussion of the book at America’s Black Holocaust Museum (ABHM) or virtually via Zoom.
History Toward Tomorrow: Why This Matters
In the year 2026 the United States is celebrating its semiquincentennial. At ABHM, we are using this as an opportunity to create programs where we can collectively reflect on our country’s history honestly to build a better, more equitable future. The selections for the ABHM Book Club in 2026 will emphasize historical truth-telling, compelling storytelling, and diverse perspectives on our collective past. We invite participants to consider what they want the country to look like over the next 250 years. What can we learn from visionaries, historians, and thought leaders from the past in how we envision the United States of the future? In the spirit of Dr. Cameron, we invite you to join us on this journey of reflection, healing, and dreaming.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence by Alan Gilbert is a sweeping historical study that examines the thousands of African Americans who sought freedom during the American Revolution by aligning themselves with either the Patriot or Loyalist cause. Rather than presenting Black people as passive observers in the nation’s founding, Gilbert centers them as active participants navigating impossible choices in pursuit of liberty, survival, and self-determination. The book explores how enslaved and free Black men and women weighed competing promises of emancipation from the British and the revolutionaries, revealing how the ideals of the Revolution were deeply entangled with the realities of slavery.
Drawing on military records, personal narratives, correspondence, and historical accounts, Gilbert traces the lives of Black soldiers, laborers, refugees, and families whose experiences complicate traditional understandings of the Revolutionary era. He examines the contradictions between the language of freedom and the persistence of human bondage while highlighting the courage and political agency of African Americans who seized the upheaval of war as an opportunity to reshape their futures. By illuminating these overlooked histories, Black Patriots and Loyalists offers a fuller portrait of the American Revolution and challenges readers to reconsider who fought for freedom, what freedom meant, and whose stories have long remained at the margins of the national narrative.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan Gilbert is an American historian, political scholar, and author whose work explores democracy, social justice, war, and the experiences of marginalized peoples throughout history. Trained in political theory and history, Gilbert has taught at institutions including the University of Denver and the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, where his scholarship has frequently examined the intersections of race, citizenship, freedom movements, and political power. His writing combines rigorous historical research with a commitment to uncovering voices and perspectives often minimized within traditional narratives of the American past.
Gilbert is the author of several books addressing political thought, democratic practice, and African American history. In Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence, he brings renewed attention to the central role Black Americans played during the Revolutionary era and the complex decisions they faced in pursuing freedom within a nation founded amid slavery. Through detailed archival research and accessible storytelling, Gilbert challenges simplified interpretations of the American Revolution and contributes to a broader understanding of the struggle for liberty in the United States.