Talk Africana

After being snatched from her parents home in West Africa and sold into slavery in Boston, Phillis Wheatley became the first African American to publish a book of poetry in 1773.

Tippu Tip was an Arab–Zanzibari slave trader who sold tens of thousands of people into bondage in the Arabian peninsula and beyond.

The "Leper Tree," as it has become known, remains standing till this very day. On its trunk is a hand-painted sign that reads: "The grave for individuals who suffered from leprosy in the past."

The Kome Caves are a group of smooth walled, igloo-shaped cave dwellings made out of mud in the district of Berea, Lesotho.

Ota Benga's family was killed, he was taken as a slave, and he lived in the Bronx Zoo's monkey house as a human exhibit.

Caty Louette, was one of the most powerful female slave trader on Goree Island, a tiny, island off the coast of Dakar, in Senegal

The Bloodwood Tree is a kind of hardwood tree native to southern Africa that releases a deep red sap which looks very similar to blood, when cut or damaged.

Ogbidi Okojie, king of Uromi was a ruler of the Esan people in what is now present day Edo State in Nigeria, he is well known all over Esan land for his opposition to British rule.

Valentine Strasser is an ex-military leader of Sierra Leone who took power in a 1992 coup at the age of 25, making him the youngest head of state in the world.

A photographer's Rare 20th Century Look at Africa: Eliot Elisofon was an internationally known photographer and filmmaker whose enduring visual record of African life from 1947 to 1972 was published in magazines such as Life and the National Geographic.