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...
When the U.S. banned the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, Southern plantation owners could no longer import Africans. To meet rising demand for labour, they turned inward, breeding enslaved Africans already in the country. At the heart of this...
In late January 1934, Robert Johnson, a 40-year-old Black man, was wrongly arrested for assaulting a white woman in Tampa, Florida. Although the police eventually cleared him of any involvement, a white mob seized him and lynched him before...
On October 18, 1933, George Armwood, a 23-year-old African American labourer, was lynched in Princess Anne, Maryland, in what would be the last recorded lynching in the state. Like many before him, Armwood’s death was not the result of...
In the mid-19th century, when the mere act of helping an enslaved African escape was punishable by years of brutal imprisonment, or worse, one man dared to defy the law in the name of faith and freedom. His name...
In August 1908, the city of Springfield, Illinois—often celebrated as the hometown of Abraham Lincoln—became the site of one of the most violent race riots in American history. Over the course of just a few days, white mobs rampaged...
David Drake, also known as “Dave the Potter”, was a master craftsman, poet, and one of the most remarkable enslaved Africans in 19th-century America. Born around 1800 in South Carolina, he was taught to shape clay into large, durable...
William Donnegan was an 84-year-old Black cobbler, property owner, former conductor on the Underground Railroad and longtime resident of Springfield, Illinois, whose wealth and interracial marriage made him a target of white resentment during the infamous Springfield Race Riot...
In August 1908, Springfield, Illinois, a city hailed as the home of Abraham Lincoln, erupted into a storm of racial violence that shocked the nation. Between August 14 and 16, an estimated 5,000 white Americans and European immigrants carried...
The term “fancy girls” refers to light-skinned enslaved biracial or african girls who were sold for the purpose of sexual exploitation and concubinage during the antebellum period in the United States.
These young girls, many of them barely into their...
