In the late 16th century, when Portugal began pushing deeper into Angola, it turned to African military groups to help fight the powerful states of the interior. Among them were the Imbangala, whose warriors would eventually fight alongside the...
Ali Soilih was a Comorian president who attempted to transform his newly independent country through a radical socialist revolution. He challenged French influence, traditional Muslim customs and the authority of established elites. His policies won support among sections of...
When enslaved Africans were brought to the Americas, Christianity was gradually introduced into their lives. Missionaries preached to them, slaveholders encouraged religious instruction, and some enslaved people were baptized and became committed Christians. But an important question remains: did...
In December 1869, a young Black man named Cyrus Guy was taken by a white mob in Orange County, North Carolina, and lynched for allegedly insulting a white woman. There was no trial, no opportunity for Guy to defend...
In 1712, colonial South Carolina passed a law establishing increasingly severe punishments for enslaved people who repeatedly ran away. The law, titled “An ACT for the better ordering and governing of Negroes and Slaves,” treated escape as an offense...
In February 1763, enslaved Africans in Berbice, a Dutch colony in present-day Guyana, rose against the brutal plantation system that had kept them in bondage, launching one of the most significant slave revolts in 18th-century South America. What began...
In December 1922, the small town of Perry, Florida, became the scene of a wave of racial violence after the murder of a white schoolteacher. Over the following two weeks, white mobs killed several Black men, burned Black homes...
Robert Wedderburn was a Jamaican-born preacher and radical abolitionist who was jailed for his outspoken attacks on slavery and religious authority. Born around 1762 to an enslaved Black woman and a Scottish plantation owner, he grew up close to...
In the fall of 1861, Mary Peake began teaching Black children who had escaped slavery in Virginia. Her classroom was beneath a large oak tree near Fort Monroe, where thousands of formerly enslaved people had sought refuge behind Union...
William Parker was a formerly enslaved man who escaped from Maryland and settled in Pennsylvania, where he built a life among a growing Black community determined to protect its freedom. He became known for helping others who had escaped...
