History

Harry Washington was an African who was enslaved by none other than George Washington, the future first President of the United States. However, Harry’s story transcends the chains of slavery, as he not only fought for his own liberation...

The Langa Massacre of 1985 stands out as a chilling example of police brutality during South Africa's tumultuous apartheid era. As mourners made their way to the funeral of one of the six individuals slain by apartheid police on...

Coffy, also spelled as Cuffy, Kofi or Koffi, was an enslaved man of Akan descent, played an important role in leading a major slave revolt, rallying more than 3,800 enslaved individuals against the colonial authorities in Berbice, present-day Guyana...

Titina Silá was born into a world shaped by colonial rule, where the people of Guinea-Bissau were subjected to the exploitative practices of Portuguese imperialism. The oppressive environment she grew up in later became a catalyst for her activism....

Willie James Howard, a 15-year-old African American living in Live Oak, Suwannee County, Florida, met a tragic fate on January 2, 1944, in a harrowing act of racial violence that shook the nation's conscience. The events leading to his death...

John Hartfield was a black man who met a gruesome fate in Ellisville, Mississippi, in 1919, for the supposed crime of being romantically involved with a white woman, Ruth Meeks. Born into a society deeply divided along racial lines, Hartfield...

Kpana Lewis was a Sherbro chief from Sierra Leone and a vocal opponent of colonial rule of the British who was exiled to Ghana for resisting colonialism. Kpana Lewis was born in 1830 on Sherbro Island in the Southern Province...

Reverend Isaac Simmons was a Black preacher and farmer from Amite County, Mississippi, who was murdered by a gang of white men in 1945 for his land, which was rumoured to contain oil deposits. Born in 1879, Reverend Simmons inherited...

Charles Lewis Reason, an American mathematician, linguist, and educator, was the first black college professor in the United States. He taught at New York Central College in McGrawville.

Tolton was an African-American born into slavery in Monroe County, Missouri, around 1854. During the Civil War, he fled to Quincy, Illinois, with his family and eventually became the first publicly recognized Black Catholic priest in the United States. Tolton's...