Thomas Peters (black leader)

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Thomas Peters or Thomas Potters in the Book of Negroes (c. 1738 – June 25, 1792) was an African American slave who fled North Carolina with the British during the American Revolutionary War and later ended up as a leader in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Thomas Peters has been referred to as the first African American hero. ^[1] Peters, like Joseph Jenkins Roberts, is considered the African American founding father of a nation.^[2] Historians believe Thomas Peters was either born in Nigeria or North Carolina of Egba (Yoruba) or Igbo descent, and most historians believe him to have been born in Nigeria. Peters' descendants, and those of other Black Loyalists, make up the 7% Creole of the population of Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Peters fled his owner's flour mill near Wilmington, North Carolina ^[3] at the start of the American Revolutionary War and joined the Black Pioneers, a Black Loyalist unit made up of runaway African American slaves who had been promised their freedom by the British in exchange for supporting the war effort against the colonies that formed the new United States. Many slaves joined the British after the United States had been established as a nation; therefore many were legally qualified to remain as American slaves.^[4] Peters rose to the rank of sergeant in the regiment.

After the war Peters and other former slaves were taken by the British to Nova Scotia with other British Loyalists, where they stayed from 1783 to 1791. In 1790 Peters went to London, where he helped convince the Royal government (with the help of Granville Sharp) to establish the colony that eventually became Sierra Leone. After convincing about 1,100 of the 3,500 American blacks to return to Africa, Peters died of malaria in Freetown during the first rainy season in 1792. Peters died leaving a wife and seven children. His descendants are members of the Krio ethnic group which lives predominantly in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

During 1988 Peters was honored by the Sierra Leone government by being included in a book celebrating the country's national heroes. In 2007 Percival Street (specifically Settler Town, Sierra Leone where Peter's Nova Scotians settled) in Freetown was renamed in his honor.^[5]