 Ric Murphy
President General,
Society of the First African Families of English America
Biography:
Ric Murphy is an acclaimed historian, educator, lecturer, and documentarian, and has presented throughout North America, Europe, and Africa. He is known for his social justice work and his research of American history, his publications include the Arrival of the First Africans in Virginia in 1619 (History Press, 2020); Section 27 and Freedman’s Village in Arlington National Cemetery: The African American History of Americas Most Hallowed Ground (McFarland Publishers, 2020); the biography of Rear Admiral Larry Chambers, USN: First African American to Command an Aircraft Carrier (McFarland Publishers, 2017); and Freedom Road: An American Family Saga from Jamestown to World War (Franklin Pearson Publishers, 2014). He is currently working on a manuscript, Liberty: The Legacy of 1776 and Cuffee’s Lane, expected to be released in the fall of 2023 and The Thirteenth Amendment (History Press).
Mr. Murphy has received well over one hundred awards and commendations including some of his most recent: the National Genealogical Society’s Presidential Citation (2020); the Frederick Douglass Service Award (2020), the William Wells Brown Service Award (2018) and the Elijah Able Service Award (2017), each from the Sons and Daughters of the Middle Passage; the Distinguished Service Award from the Prince George’s County Chapter, the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (2018); and the Elizabeth Clark-Lewis Award, the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (2016).
Ric currently serves as the President General of the Society of the First African Families of English America and was the former National Vice President for the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society. His family lineage dates to the earliest colonial periods of Jamestown, Virginia and of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and has been evaluated and accepted by several heredity societies, including but not limited to the General Society Sons of the Revolution; the Daughters of the American Revolution; the National Society of the Sons of Colonial New England; the Sons of the American Revolution; the Sons of the Union Veterans of the Civil War; the Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage; and the Society of the First African Families of English America. Mr. Murphy was a Resident Fellow at Harvard University, Kennedy School; earned a Masters from Boston University, and a Bachelors from the University of Massachusetts.
He descends from two of the Angolans who arrived in 1619 at Point Comfort, Virginia, John Gowen and Margaret Cornish. He also descends from seventeen Revolutionary War Patriot soldiers, of which eight were Americans of African descent known as Forgotten Patriots.
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