William Gibbons, born around 1825 in Albemarle County, Virginia, was an African American who was enslaved by a professor at the University of Virginia.
Charles Colcock Jones was a slaveholder, and missionary who dedicated his life to teaching the Christian gospel to enslaved people with the specific goal of making them more obedient and submissive.
During slavery, it was common for families to be torn apart, with husbands, wives, children, and siblings sold to different plantations or regions of the country, sometimes never to see one another again. After gaining their freedom, many of...
John Brown was a prominent leader in the American abolitionist movement during the decades leading up to the Civil War. He became known as the leading advocate for using violence to end American slavery after years of peaceful efforts...
Isadore Banks was a World War I veteran and a prosperous African American landowner in Arkansas. In 1954, he was brutally lynched, and despite the horrific nature of his murder, no one was ever brought to justice.
Isadore Banks was...
On June 22, 1940, in the small town of Luverne, Alabama, Jesse Thornton, a 26-year-old African-American man, was lynched for allegedly failing to address a white man as "Mister." Thornton managed a chicken farm and had gone to town...
Passed by the South Carolina Assembly on the 10th of May, 1740, the Negro Act was a comprehensive set of laws aimed at controlling and subjugating the enslaved population within the colony. Among its most notorious provisions was the...
Lynched on January 15, 1889, in Jefferson County, Alabama,George Meadows was a victim of a society plagued by racism, false accusations, and mob justice.
The events leading to Meadows's lynching began on January 14, 1889, when a white woman reported...
Delphine LaLaurie was a prominent New Orleans socialite in the early 19th century who became infamous for the atrocities committed at her mansion, particularly after a fire in 1834 revealed the horrific conditions in which enslaved Africans were kept.
Born...
Onesimus was an enslaved African who, in the late 17th century, was purchased and given as a gift to Puritan minister Cotton Mather. His extensive knowledge of inoculation, a practice he had undergone in Africa to prevent smallpox, would...
