On 22 February 1757, enslaved Africans at a timber plantation in Dutch-controlled Suriname rose against their enslavers. What followed was a rebellion that spread across the region, drew hundreds of people away from the plantations and dealt a serious...
John Jasper was born into slavery on July 4, 1812, in Fluvanna County, Virginia. He was the youngest of twenty-four children born to Philip and Tina Jasper, who were enslaved by the Peachy family. His father was a well-known...
Chibalo was a system of forced labour used by Portuguese colonial authorities to exploit African workers, particularly in Mozambique and Angola. Through colonial laws, the government compelled Africans to work on plantations, build roads and serve the interests of...
Joe Woodman was a Black sawmill worker in Arkansas who was lynched in July 1905 after eloping with a white girl. After the couple were found and brought back to Dumas, Woodman was locked in jail. During the night,...
During European colonial rule in Africa, some Africans received special privileges for adopting European culture, speaking European languages, and following European customs. In the Belgian Congo, these Africans were known as évolués, a French word meaning “evolved” or “developed.”...
Benjamin Lay was an English-born abolitionist who spent his life fighting slavery and challenging Christians who owned enslaved people. Through public protests and his 1737 book, All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates, he condemned their hypocrisy...
The Indigénat was a system of French colonial laws that allowed officials to punish Africans for minor offences without the protections of an ordinary court. Introduced in Algeria in 1881 and later extended across French Africa, it helped France...
On September 7, 1889, a white mob broke into the Boone County Jail in Columbia, Missouri, seized a Black teenager named George Bush and hanged him from a second-story window of the county courthouse. Bush was just 17 or...
In October 1906, a wave of racial violence swept through Argenta, Arkansas, after a white farmer was shot and killed. Over the next four days, armed white mobs attacked Black residents, burned homes and businesses, and forced many families...
In the years before the American Civil War, slavery was not only defended by politicians and slaveholders. Some Christian ministers also built theological arguments around it, using the Bible to argue that slaveholding was compatible with Christianity. One of...
