Shirley Chisholm made history in 1968 when she became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress, representing New York’s 12th Congressional District. Her election broke a major political barrier and marked the beginning of a congressional...
Bokar Biro Barry was fighting to preserve the independence of Fouta Djallon when French forces defeated his army in November 1896. He was captured and killed, and his head was severed from his body and sent to France. His...
On November 3, 1874, Black voters gathered at polling stations in Eufaula, Alabama, to participate in an election that would determine political control of Barbour County. Instead of exercising their voting rights peacefully, they were met with armed white...
The Thibodaux Massacre is one of the deadliest episodes of racial violence in American labour history. It took place in November 1887 in Louisiana, following a sugarcane workers’ strike over wages and working conditions. As tensions between Black workers...
Abram Colby was dragged from his bed to the woods by a white mob on October 29, 1869, where he was beaten with sticks and leather straps for more than three hours. Two days earlier, he had refused a...
In 1765, enslaved Africans aboard a slave ship called the Sally revolted against their captors while being transported from West Africa to the Caribbean to be sold into slavery. Their attempt to resist captivity was met with deadly force...
Lewis Temple was a Black American blacksmith and inventor whose work changed the way people hunted whales in the 19th century. In 1848, he developed an improved harpoon that made it harder for a whale to escape after being...
The Church of England on February 8, 2006, confronted an uncomfortable part of its history. Its General Synod voted unanimously to apologize for the church’s role in sustaining and profiting from the transatlantic slave trade. The apology acknowledged that...
In 1873, King Kobina Gyan of Elmina, in present-day Ghana, was exiled to Sierra Leone by British colonial authorities for refusing to swear allegiance to the British Crown. His refusal cost him his kingdom, and he spent the next...
Wade Perrin was ordered to dance, sing and pray by a group of white men before they told him to run for his life. As he ran, they shot him dead. His crime was being a Black politician who...
