Finding my roots...

Dr. Shirley Green is dedicated to showcasing the profound impact of Revolutionary Black figures in history. With a PhD and a passion for storytelling, she brings forth insightful narratives that challenge conventions and celebrate unique individuals. Her book, Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color, Soldiers of Independence, details the stories of two ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War.

Dr. Green's investigation of her ancestors began innocently enough in a classroom at the University of Toledo.  Taking copious notes during a lecture in an African American history class regarding the first great wave of emancipations after the American Revolution, she stopped short when the professor mentioned the migration of black loyalists to Nova Scotia.  As a young child, Nova Scotia seemed a mystical place—where her elderly maternal grandfather lived before his emigration to the United States. She always believed that Pa’s family made its way to Canada by way of the Underground Railroad.  She was wrong and had fallen victim to the trap (described by Genealogist Barbara Thompson Howell) of thinking her family’s story paralleled the most often-told story of African Americans.   

She phoned the oldest surviving male member of her immediate family, Ben Franklin, who recited the core element of the Franklin family’s oral history—that two freeborn brothers named William and Ben Frank fought for the “Black Regiment” of Rhode Island during the Revolutionary War.  However interesting and invigorating, this did not explain why her grandfather was born and raised in Nova Scotia.  She was left with two disconnected stories—the Franck brothers’ service with the “Black Regiment” during the Revolutionary War and the migration of black loyalists to Nova Scotia.  It became her mission to connect those two stories. That is the purpose of the book: to connect those stories through historical research and place a more reliable version within the context of African Americans in the Revolutionary era.