The American Revolution all but ended at Yorktown. Far less known is Hampton Roads’ dramatic role at the war’s start, and the brave Black Americans who, 250 years ago this month, risked their lives in the cause of liberty. Their stories will be at the heart of Friday’s symposium “Competing Freedoms: Hampton Roads at the Start of the American Revolution” at The Slover in downtown Norfolk.

During the summer of 1775, an enslaved ship’s pilot named Joseph Harris slipped away from his patriot owner in Hampton and sought sanctuary on a Royal Navy ship. Virginia’s royal governor, Lord Dunmore, had abandoned the capital of Williamsburg for Portsmouth’s Gosport shipyard; the vessel was part of a small fleet assembled to counter the growing rebellion.

The flight of the “small mulatto man” was a ga

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