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...
On April 27, 1899, in Leesburg, Georgia, Mitchell Daniel, a Black community leader, was lynched by white neighbors in what became another dark chapter of racial terror in the United States. His “crime” was talking too much about the...
Richard Dickerson was an African American laborer living in Springfield, Ohio, whose lynching by a white mob on March 7, 1904 became the catalyst for further racial violence, including the targeted destruction of Black-owned businesses in the city’s “Levee”...
In colonial Maryland in 1681, a young Irish woman named Eleanor Butler, also known as Irish Nell, made a bold and controversial decision that would forever change her life. At just 16 years old, she defied societal norms by...
During the era of chattel slavery in the United States, Southern states actively suppressed the education of African Americans, both enslaved and free. Alabama, like many other states, recognized literacy as a potential threat to the institution of slavery....
