When Cotton Mather published The Negro Christianized in 1706, his message went beyond a call to spiritual duty. It was also a calculated appeal to the interests of slaveholders. He argued that introducing Christianity to enslaved servants would not...
The scramble auction was one of the most inhumane and chaotic forms of selling enslaved Africans during the transatlantic slave trade. This method of auction had a fixed price system: every captive cost the same, no bidding allowed. That...
Barsirian Arap Manyei was a Nandi leader who spent 42 years in detention under British rule, making him Kenya’s longest-serving political prisoner. His so-called crime was not theft or violence, but his unwavering opposition to colonial authority and his...
Octavius Valentine Catto was a gifted educator, civil rights activist, and community leader, who dedicated his life to the upliftment of Black Americans through education, political participation, and equal rights. His remarkable achievements and unwavering activism, however, made him...
In the slaveholding South, even words could be treated as weapons. Preaching against slavery or distributing antislavery literature was not just unpopular, it was a crime. Few men knew this better than Rev. Daniel Worth, a Wesleyan Methodist pastor...
On June 30, 1905, the town of Watkinsville, Georgia, became the site of one of the most horrific acts of racial violence in American history. That night, a large mob seized nine men from the Oconee County jail and...
Dred Scott was an enslaved African man in the United States who became the central figure in one of the most infamous Supreme Court cases in American history, Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). His life began in bondage, and...
Long before Central Park became New York City’s most iconic green space, its land was home to a thriving, self-sufficient settlement known as Seneca Village. Founded in 1825 by free African Americans, the community represented one of the first...
The Haitian Revolution was a shockingly brutal conflict. While the Haitian people were prepared to fight to the end for their freedom, the French army was determined to use extreme brutality to put down the slave uprising. One figure...
In 18th-century Liverpool, the docks bustled with ships and merchants chasing wealth, but much of that fortune was built on the lives and suffering of thousands of enslaved Africans who were treated as mere cargo. One of the men...
