1750s

Benjamin Banneker, a free Black farmer in Maryland, hand-carves a wooden clock based on the mechanism of a borrowed pocket watch, without ever having seen a full clock. The clock keeps accurate time for over 50 years. Built when Banneker was 22, it demonstrates a self-taught mathematical precision that will mark his later astronomical and surveying work.

Now freed and married to Abijah Prince, Lucy Terry Prince wins a property boundary dispute before the Governor's Council of Vermont through her own spoken argument, without legal counsel. Justice Samuel Chase later called her argument superior to any he had heard from a Vermont lawyer. She wins a second case before the Vermont Supreme Court in 1796.

Yarrow Mamout, a Muslim man from Guinea, was brought to Maryland as an enslaved person around 1752 and eventually purchased his freedom. He became a prosperous property owner in Georgetown (now Washington D.C.), owned shares in the Columbia Bank, and was celebrated for his intellect and longevity. He was painted twice — once by Charles Willson Peale in 1819 — and is one of the best-documented Muslim Africans in early American history, demonstrating the presence of Islam among enslaved Africans.

Enslaved and free Black Baptists worship at the Bluestone (African) Baptist Church in Virginia — among the earliest Black congregations.