In August 1823, one of the largest uprisings of enslaved Africans in the British Caribbean unfolded in the colony of Demerara-Essequibo, part of what is now Guyana. Known to history as the Demerara Rebellion, the event involved between 10,000...
The history of slavery in the United States is often told through economics, labor, and politics, but one of the most intimate and horrifying dimensions of the system was the exploitation of Black women’s reproductive capacities. They were forced...
The Danane concentration camp was an Italian colonial prison near Mogadishu, established after Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia. It held thousands of East Africans who had resisted Italian rule, including fighters, community leaders, and civilians. Life in the camp was...
The lynching of Jesse Washington on May 15, 1916, remains one of the most horrific and Well Documented Lynchings in American history. It took place in Waco, Texas, a city that at the time prided itself on being progressive,...
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...
