In the United States before the Civil War, slavery was not only a social system but also a business. Every part of enslaved life was measured and turned into profit. From the crops they grew to the children they...
In April 1892, Henry and Ephraim Grizzard, two African American brothers from Middle Tennessee, were lynched after being accused of assaulting two white sisters in Goodlettsville. The charges were never proven, yet both men were killed by white mobs...
When the United States Congress voted to abolish the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, many hoped it would signal a decline in the horrors of slavery. But instead of ending human bondage, this legal milestone gave rise to one...
In the early hours of September 11, 1851, long before the first rooster crowed over Christiana, Pennsylvania, a group of armed white men climbed the hill to William Parker’s home. They came with warrants. They came with chains. They...
Henrietta Smith Bowers Duterte was a pioneering African-American funeral home owner, philanthropist, and courageous abolitionist from Philadelphia who turned her profession into a powerful tool of resistance, smuggling freedom through the very rituals meant to honor the dead. She...
Basil Manly Sr. was more than a Southern preacher, he was one of the most vocal and influential theological defenders of American slavery. A prominent Baptist minister, university president, and the author of the infamous Alabama Resolutions, Manly’s beliefs...
Lewis C. Robards was a slave trader who ran a slave jail in Lexington, Kentucky, where he became notorious for trafficking what the white slave trade called “fancy girls”, light-skinned Black girls and women who were specifically sold for...
On the morning of March 28, 1941, deep in a wooded ravine at Fort Benning, Georgia, the lifeless body of Private Felix Hall was discovered. He had been hanging from a tree by a noose, his hands tied behind...
Charles Turner Torrey was an American pastor, journalist, and one of the most daring and politically-minded abolitionists of the 19th century. He played a major role in the fight against slavery by organizing direct actions to help enslaved Africans...
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...
