Thomas L. Jennings was a trailblazer in both invention and civil rights. In 1821, he became the first known African American to receive a U.S. patent for his dry-scouring method, an early version of modern dry cleaning. Beyond his...
In September 1921, in the small town of Pittsboro in Chatham County, North Carolina, sixteen-year-old Eugene Daniel became the victim of one of the most brutal acts of racial violence of the Jim Crow era. What began as a...
Alonzo Franklin Herndon was a former slave who became one of the first Black millionaires in the United States and the most powerful Black businessman in Atlanta during the early 20th century, overcoming poverty, systemic racism, and a society...
The Maxim gun, invented in 1884 by American-born engineer Hiram Maxim, was the world’s first fully automatic machine gun. Capable of firing 500 to 600 bullets per minute, it gave small European forces a staggering advantage over much larger...
In the early nineteenth century, European missionaries poured into West Africa convinced they were bringing light to a “dark continent.” Many did not last long enough to preach. Disease, especially malaria, killed them with ruthless speed. Among the few...
In nineteenth-century Europe, Africans were rare sights in royal courts, and when present, they were often treated less as ordinary people and more as symbols of curiosity and status. One such figure was John Panzio, an African man who...
Anarcha Westcott was an enslaved African woman whose life and suffering became central to the development of modern gynecology. For decades, her story was nearly invisible, surviving only in the writings of Dr. J. Marion Sims, the physician who...
Operation Breadbasket was one of the most ambitious economic justice campaigns of the Civil Rights era, a movement built on a simple but powerful idea: Black Americans should not support businesses that refused to hire, respect, or promote them....
The Vicksburg massacre was one of the longest and deadliest attacks on freed Black Americans during the Reconstruction era. Beginning on December 7, 1874, and continuing until around January 5, 1875, the violence in Vicksburg, Mississippi left an estimated...
In the heart of the 19th century, when most Black people in America were still denied education, freedom, and basic human rights, one man managed to carve his name into the pages of American innovation. His name was Henry...
