In the late 19th century, Memphis, Tennessee, was a city rife with racial tension, where economic success for African Americans was often met with hostility. At the heart of this disturbance was Peoples Grocery, a thriving Black-owned store that...
Anne Marie Becraft was an influential 19th-century American educator and one of the first African-American nuns in the Catholic Church. Born in 1805 to a free Black Catholic family in Washington, D.C., she founded the first school for Black...
On October 11, 1878, Posey County, Indiana, near the town of Mount Vernon, became the site of the largest reported lynching in the state’s history when a white mob brutally lynched Jim Good, Jeff Hopkins, Ed Warner, William Chambers,...
In the early 19th century, a remarkable figure emerged in the fight against oppression and systemic racism in the United States. John Berry Meachum, a freed African reverend, educator, abolitionist and entrepreneur, defied the odds and built a legacy...
Ned was an enslaved African owned by Oscar J.E. Stuart, a lawyer and planter from Mississippi, known for inventing the innovative “double plow and scraper." Despite the practical importance of the invention, Ned could not patent it due to...
Berry Washington, an elderly African American man in his seventies, became a tragic symbol of racial injustice when he was lynched in Milan, Georgia, on May 26, 1919. His crime? Defending two young Black girls from a violent assault...
On December 31, 1862, African Americans across the United States gathered in churches, homes, and secret meeting places, anxiously awaiting the dawn of a new year. This night, known as Freedom’s Eve, was unlike any other in American history....
In December 1765, Charleston, South Carolina, was thrown into chaos when rumors of an impending slave insurrection by enslaved Africans disrupted the city’s Christmas festivities. The fear of rebellion cast a shadow over the season’s celebrations, leaving white residents...
Louis Hughes, was one of the many enslaved African Americans who experienced the horrors of slavery in the United States. Hughes’ story, recounted in his memoir Thirty Years a Slave, reveals the cruelty of a system that dehumanized African...
Lynching was one of the most brutal tools of racial terror in the United States, serving as a public spectacle of white supremacy and a tool of social control over African Americans. Between the late 19th century and well...
