History

John Hawkins was an English naval commander and merchant who played a significant role in the early development of English involvement in the transatlantic slave trade during the 16th century.

For 40 years, from 1932 to 1972, the United States government conducted a controversial and unethical experiment known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. This study targeted a vulnerable population - African American men - and exploited their trust, resulting in tragic consequences.

Clennon W. King Jr. was an extraordinary African-American activist who, in 1958, was confined to a mental institution for attempting to enroll in summer classes at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. His story sheds light on the deep-seated...

In the aftermath of Guinea's vote for independence, France ignored Guinea's request for diplomatic recognition and launched a deliberate campaign to dismantle and destroy the infrastructure and resources they had developed within the country.

In the 18th century, while the Church preached to Africans about a God in whose image they were made, it funded a company that carted them away from Africa in ten of thousands.

Lothar von Trotha, a German general, is infamously remembered as the architect of the first genocide of the 20th century, which unfolded in Namibia. Serving as the commander of German forces in German South-West Africa (now Namibia) during the early 1900s, von Trotha led a brutal campaign against the indigenous Herero and Nama peoples.

Prince Henry of Battenberg was a member of the British Royal Family and the husband of Princess Beatrice, Queen Victoria's youngest daughter, whose journey to confront the Ashanti people of Ghana in 1896 ended in his tragic death.

Fearing that black literacy would prove a threat to the slave system, whites in many colonies instituted laws forbidding slaves to learn to read or write and making it a crime for others to teach them.

Henrietta Lacks was a remarkable black woman whose cells, which were harvested without her consent, were crucial to a revolutionary medical discovery that ultimately saved countless lives.

Lena Baker was an African American maid in Cuthbert, Georgia, USA, who was unfairly convicted of killing her white rapist employer, Ernest Knight. In 1945, she was executed by electrocution, making her the only woman in Georgia's history to have been put to death in this manner.