Throughout the brutal centuries of American slavery, resistance was as common as the oppression itself. Enslaved Africans did not passively accept their bondage; they rebelled, sometimes in open defiance, other times in carefully organized revolts that struck at the...
Chief Chingaira Makoni was a prominent leader of the Makoni people in what is now eastern Zimbabwe. He is remembered for resisting British colonial forces during the First Chimurenga (1896–1897), a Shona and Ndebele uprising against the British South...
When the U.S. banned the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, Southern plantation owners could no longer import Africans. To meet rising demand for labour, they turned inward, breeding enslaved Africans already in the country. At the heart of this...
In late January 1934, Robert Johnson, a 40-year-old Black man, was wrongly arrested for assaulting a white woman in Tampa, Florida. Although the police eventually cleared him of any involvement, a white mob seized him and lynched him before...
In 1834, when the British Empire officially abolished slavery, the government organized what would become one of the largest transfers of wealth to private individuals in history. Yet, none of this money went to the people who had endured...
The Bondelswarts Rebellion of 1922, also known as the Bondelswarts Uprising, was a violent and controversial incident that took place in South Africa’s League of Nations Mandate of South West Africa, now known as Namibia. The unsuccessful uprising which...
In the summer of 1908, Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln’s hometown, erupted in a violent two-day race riot fueled by racial hatred. Angry white mobs attacked Black residents, burned their businesses, and lynched those who dared to stand their ground....
The Society for the Conversion of Negro Slaves was a British missionary organization established in the late 18th century, under the leadership of Anglican Bishop Beilby Porteus. Its primary aim was to replace African spiritual beliefs with Christian doctrines...
Thomas Leyland was a British slave trader, banker, and politician whose wealth and influence in 18th-century Liverpool were largely built on the back of the transatlantic slave trade. His journey to immense wealth began with a stroke of luck...
The 1842 Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation stands as the largest revolt of enslaved Africans within Cherokee-controlled lands in what was then Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). This daring act of resistance unfolded on November 15, 1842, when 20...
