Richard Mentor Johnson, a powerful U.S. senator from Kentucky who would later rise to the vice presidency, built a remarkable political career in early nineteenth century America. But his life was shadowed by a relationship he refused to conceal....
Kissi Kaba Keita was a nineteenth-century African chief and war leader from the Kissi people of what is now southeastern Guinea. He is remembered for organizing armed resistance against French colonial expansion in the early 1890s. His refusal to...
In 1724, colonial Jamaica crossed a legal line that revealed how fragile justice was once race entered the picture. After a free Black man whooped a white attacker and successfully defended himself in court, Jamaica’s white-controlled Assembly responded not...
In 1958, the United States witnessed what is widely regarded as the most absurd “rape case” in its legal history. Known as the Kissing Case, the incident involved two African American children, nine-year-old James Hanover Thompson and seven-year-old David...
When people think of the Ku Klux Klan, they often imagine hooded mobs and night riders from the era of Reconstruction. What is less widely known is that the most powerful version of the Klan was not created in...
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the rapid expansion of medical education in the United States and Europe created a desperate demand for human bodies. Anatomy classes, surgical training, and medical research all depended on dissection, but legal sources...
When historians trace the roots of the transatlantic slave economy, they almost always point to European states, colonial planters, and mercantile networks. What is not widely acknowledged, and yet just as true, is that a major Christian institution played...
In the late 18th century, Saint-Domingue was France’s richest Atlantic plantation colony, producing sugar and coffee through a system of brutal forced labor. Although France’s Code Noir theoretically regulated the treatment of enslaved people, including prohibitions on torture and...
Born on September 12, 1887, in Nkamba, near Thysville, Congo, Simon Kimbangu was a Congolese religious leader who founded the Kimbanguist Church and preached a form of Christianity independent of European missionaries. His African-led ministry directly challenged colonial control...
James Henry Hammond was a powerful and controversial figure in antebellum South Carolina. A U.S. representative, governor, and senator, Hammond was celebrated in his time for his political skill, wealth, and influence. Yet behind this public image lay a...
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.
Throughout the Atlantic slave world, slaveholders often promoted Christianity among enslaved Africans believing religion would encourage obedience, humility, and...
