History

Drapetomania was a conjectural mental illness that, in 1851, American physician Samuel A. Cartwright hypothesized as the cause of enslaved Africans fleeing captivity. The concept of Drapetomania was proposed by Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright, an American physician, in the mid-19th...

Bridgetower was a biracial Afro-European musician who started playing the violin at the young age of 10. He is well known for inspiring Beethoven's

Abushiri, was a wealthy merchant and slave-owning plantation owner who is known for Revolting against the German East Africa Company in present-day Tanzania.

Arthur William Hodge was a plantation farmer and notoriously cruel slave owner in the British Virgin Islands, who was hanged in 1811 for the murder of one of his slaves. He was the first and only British slave owner to...

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas is the first ever black man to lead a European army. He was the first person of color in the French military to become brigadier general, the first to become divisional general, and the first to become general-in-chief of a French army.

Ogbidi Okojie, king of Uromi was a ruler of the Esan people in what is now present day Edo State in Nigeria, he is well known all over Esan land for his opposition to British rule.

Ana Joaquina dos Santos y Silva also referred to as Dona Ana Mulata was a rich entrepreneur who was very active in the transatlantic slave trade business. She is perhaps the biggest slave trader in Angola in the 1830's.

In 1898, Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana, or Mbuya Nehanda as she was known, was a powerful spirit medium, and heroine of the First Chimurenga, the revolt against the British South Africa Company in Matabeleland.

Slavery in the United States wasn’t abolished at the federal level until after the Civil War, but on this day in history, May 18, 1652, the first anti-slavery statute in the U.S. colonies was passed in what’s now the state of Rhode Island.

The decades between 1907 and 1963 was a stretch of existential horror in the United States for people who were considered poor. Their existence was perceived as a kind of pollution, and the best way to ensure their weak seeds don’t germinate into mistakes like them was to sterilize them clean of their ability to reproduce.