Most people assume that every black American who lived in the US before 1870 was a slave. That is simply not true thanks to Dennis Richmond, Jr. who researched his family history.
In 1860, three years before the Emancipation Proclamation, The United States Federal Census Schedule reported 488,070 free black Americans. True, many might say quasi-free, since these African Americans could not vote. But free they still were — almost half a million of them — roughly 12.5% of the entire African-American population at that time.