In the summer of 1955, Emmett Louis Till was a fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago who was looking forward to spending part of his school vacation with relatives in Mississippi. He was born on July 25, 1941, and had grown...
When European powers began their rush to conquer Africa in the nineteenth century, they did not enter a completely unknown continent. Long before European armies arrived to establish colonial administrations, missionaries had already travelled deep into African territories, established...
In the early 1940s, a young girl from the Casamance region of Senegal became one of the most influential spiritual figures in her community. Her name was Aline Sitoé Diatta. A Diola spiritual leader, she would eventually become known...
On October 28, 1830, Josiah Henson crossed into Canada with his wife, Nancy, and their children, escaping slavery in the United States. But Henson’s journey did not end with his own freedom. He went on to help other Black...
When people think of slavery in America, they often picture plantation owners, politicians, and traders. Few imagine that some of slavery’s most passionate defenders stood behind church pulpits. One of the most influential was Benjamin Morgan Palmer, a celebrated...
Born into slavery around 1800 in Hoosick, New York, Myers rose from bondage to become one of the most important abolitionists in the state. For more than two decades, he and his wife Harriet transformed their home in Albany...
Mekatilili wa Menza was a Kenyan anti-colonial leader from the Giriama people who became one of the most formidable opponents of British rule in East Africa during the early twentieth century. Her resistance to colonial policies was so influential...
Elijah McCoy was an African-Canadian mechanical engineer and inventor, born to parents who had escaped slavery. He is best known for developing an improved automatic lubrication system that solved one of the greatest mechanical challenges of the Industrial Revolution....
On the night of April 19, 1980, five ordinary Black women in Chattanooga, Tennessee, became targets of a hate crime simply because of the color of their skin.
They were not activists leading a protest. They were not confronting the...
For many African rulers in the 19th century, Christian missionaries were more than preachers. They were teachers, interpreters, diplomats, and often the first Europeans to gain a king’s confidence. Some African leaders welcomed them in the hope of securing...
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.
