Tom Molineaux was an African American boxer who rose from slavery to become one of the most celebrated boxer of his time. Known for his strength and skill, he gained his freedom through boxing and became famous for his...
Medgar Wiley Evers was a prominent American civil rights activist, the first field secretary for the NAACP in Mississippi, and a World War II veteran, who dedicated his life to fighting racial segregation and injustice. His efforts to improve...
Thomas Thistlewood was an English slave owner, planter, and diarist who spent most of his life in colonial Jamaica. Known for his extreme brutality, Thistlewood thoroughly documented his life in a 14,000-page diary, detailing the horrific abuse he inflicted...
Lloyd Lionel Gaines was a civil rights pioneer who sued the University of Missouri for denying him admission to its law school solely because he was African American. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor, mandating that Missouri...
In 1841, a group of enslaved African-Americans aboard the American brig Creole staged a daring revolt that would become the most successful slave revolt in U.S. history. Led by Madison Washington, the rebels seized the ship, killed one slave...
John Anthony Copeland Jr. was a man whose life and death embodied the struggle for freedom and justice in a nation deeply divided by slavery. Born free on August 15, 1834, in Raleigh, North Carolina, Copeland was arrested, tried,...
James Robinson was an enslaved African American who was lured into fighting in the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 against the United Kingdom and its allies with the false promise of freedom if the wars were...
In the late 19th century, Memphis, Tennessee, was a city rife with racial tension, where economic success for African Americans was often met with hostility. At the heart of this disturbance was Peoples Grocery, a thriving Black-owned store that...
Ned was an enslaved African owned by Oscar J.E. Stuart, a lawyer and planter from Mississippi, known for inventing the innovative “double plow and scraper." Despite the practical importance of the invention, Ned could not patent it due to...
Abu al-Misk Kafur, born in 905, was a black eunuch and freed slave who ascended to the highest echelons of power, ruling Egypt and parts of Syria as the de facto ruler from 946 until his death in 968.
Kafur’s...