Bokar Biro Barry was fighting to preserve the independence of Fouta Djallon when French forces defeated his army in November 1896. He was captured and killed, and his head was severed from his body and sent to France. His...
On November 3, 1874, Black voters gathered at polling stations in Eufaula, Alabama, to participate in an election that would determine political control of Barbour County. Instead of exercising their voting rights peacefully, they were met with armed white...
Lewis Temple was a Black American blacksmith and inventor whose work changed the way people hunted whales in the 19th century. In 1848, he developed an improved harpoon that made it harder for a whale to escape after being...
In 1873, King Kobina Gyan of Elmina, in present-day Ghana, was exiled to Sierra Leone by British colonial authorities for refusing to swear allegiance to the British Crown. His refusal cost him his kingdom, and he spent the next...
Wade Perrin was ordered to dance, sing and pray by a group of white men before they told him to run for his life. As he ran, they shot him dead. His crime was being a Black politician who...
John Jasper was born into slavery on July 4, 1812, in Fluvanna County, Virginia. He was the youngest of twenty-four children born to Philip and Tina Jasper, who were enslaved by the Peachy family. His father was a well-known...
During European colonial rule in Africa, some Africans received special privileges for adopting European culture, speaking European languages, and following European customs. In the Belgian Congo, these Africans were known as évolués, a French word meaning “evolved” or “developed.”...
On September 7, 1889, a white mob broke into the Boone County Jail in Columbia, Missouri, seized a Black teenager named George Bush and hanged him from a second-story window of the county courthouse. Bush was just 17 or...
In October 1906, a wave of racial violence swept through Argenta, Arkansas, after a white farmer was shot and killed. Over the next four days, armed white mobs attacked Black residents, burned homes and businesses, and forced many families...
On this day in 1904, German General Lothar von Trotha issued an extermination order against the Herero people in German South West Africa, present-day Namibia. He ordered German troops to shoot any Herero found within German territory, including those...
Anele is a web developer and a Pan-Africanist who believes bad leadership is the only thing keeping Africa from taking its rightful place in the modern world.
