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...
At a time when nonviolence was being promoted as the only legitimate form of Black resistance, Robert F. Williams openly challenged the idea that African Americans should remain defenseless in the face of white violence. His beliefs brought consequences:...
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...
The history of slavery in the United States is often told through economics, labor, and politics, but one of the most intimate and horrifying dimensions of the system was the exploitation of Black women’s reproductive capacities. They were forced...
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...
The Danane concentration camp was an Italian colonial prison near Mogadishu, established after Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia. It held thousands of East Africans who had resisted Italian rule, including fighters, community leaders, and civilians. Life in the camp was...
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...
The lynching of Jesse Washington on May 15, 1916, remains one of the most horrific and Well Documented Lynchings in American history. It took place in Waco, Texas, a city that at the time prided itself on being progressive,...
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...
Thomas L. Jennings was a trailblazer in both invention and civil rights. In 1821, he became the first known African American to receive a U.S. patent for his dry-scouring method, an early version of modern dry cleaning. Beyond his...
