From 1885 to 1908, DR Congo was transformed into a massive forced labor camp. This territory, then known as the Congo Free State, was unlike any other colony in Africa. It wasn’t controlled by a government or a European...
Chief Kadungure Mapondera was a Shona leader who led one of the most determined early armed uprisings against British colonial domination in the early 20th century. At a time when much of the region today known as Zimbabwe was...
On the night of June 15, 1920, a white mob in Duluth, Minnesota, dragged three African-American circus workers from jail, Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie, and lynched them in front of thousands. The men had been falsely...
George Whitefield is remembered as one of the most influential preachers of the 18th century. A co-founder of Methodism alongside John and Charles Wesley and a major force in the First Great Awakening, Whitefield’s legacy is often told as...
King Béhanzin, born Kondo and later known as Gbehanzin, was the eleventh monarch of the Kingdom of Dahomey, modern-day Benin. He is remembered as the last independent ruler of his kingdom, and one of West Africa’s most rebellious leaders...
Ruth First was a journalist, activist, and scholar who dedicated her life to exposing the cruelty of apartheid in South Africa. Unafraid to challenge the regime, she used words as weapons against injustice. Her bold resistance made her a...
In the 1780s, Alexander Falconbridge, a British surgeon, made several voyages aboard slave ships along the West African coast. Initially employed to care for the crew and captives, Falconbridge later turned into one of the most effective voices against...
Tula Rigaud, known simply as Tula, was an enslaved African man on the Dutch-controlled island of Curaçao who courageously led one of the most significant slave uprisings in the Caribbean during the 18th century. His resistance against the brutal...
In the long and bitter fight against British colonialism in Kenya, the name General China stands out as both a symbol of rebellion and a figure of deep controversy. Born Waruhiu Itote in 1922 in Kaheti village, Nyeri District,...
Throughout the brutal centuries of American slavery, resistance was as common as the oppression itself. Enslaved Africans did not passively accept their bondage; they rebelled, sometimes in open defiance, other times in carefully organized revolts that struck at the...