Slavery in the US
History
On This Day: Rhode Island Enacted Its 1st Law Declaring Slavery Illegal
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.
History
Female Slave Traders: Meet Niara Bely, the African Queen Who Doubled as a Slave Trader in the 1800s
Niara Bely Also known as Elizabeth Bailey Gomez, was a African queen who also doubled as a slave trader in nineteenth-century Guinea.
History
Jesus of Lübeck: How Africans Were Lured into England’s First Slave Ship
John Hawkins urged the Africans to enter his ship “Jesus of Lubeck,” also known as “The Good Ship Jesus.” for salvation, those who entered soon found they were barred from disembarking.
Jesus of Lübeck was a sailing vessel built...
Society & Culture
Memories of Slavery: The Dark History of Sierra Leone’s Bunce Island
Tens of thousands of Africans who were targeted for buying and selling on account of their rice-growing skills were shipped to the North American colonies of South Carolina and Georgia to be forced into slavery.
History
Slave Brokerage: How Early U.S. Newspapers Facilitated The Sales And Purchase Of Slaves
In the earliest history of US stock brokerage, one stock stood out both in nature and the revenue it generated – humans. The more preferred name for the merchandise was slave, and the stock market were the first US newspapers
History
Georgia City Votes To Remove Market House Where Slaves Were Sold
After 225 years, a former slave market in Georgia will be removed.
Officials in a small city in rural Georgia have voted to remove a rare, 18th-century Market House where slaves were once sold.
The open-air structure dating back to the...
History
Joseph Cinque, a Captured Slave, Led the Amistad Slave Revolt on this day in 1839
Joseph Cinque (Sengbe Pieh) was a Sierra Leonean slave who led an uprising on the Spanish slave ship, La Amistad. Later Pieh and the other slaves involved in the revolt were put on trial for the death of two...
History
Negro Dogs: How Vicious Dogs Were Used To Track, Attack, And Capture Runaway Slaves
A very popular slavery approach involved in the control and domination of African slaves was the use of highly trained, strong and aggressive Dog breeds like the bloodhounds and Dogo Cubano aka 'Negro Dog' which could tear a man...
Religion
Drapetomania: Fleeing From A Master Was Once Considered A Mental Disorder
Drapetomania was a conjectural mental illness that, in 1851, American physician Samuel A. Cartwright hypothesized as the cause of enslaved Africans fleeing captivity.
Samuel Cartwright was a medical doctor in the proslavery South. He supported slavery and even used medicine...
History
Slavery in the US: How Black Women Resisted Slave Breeding By Using Cotton Roots as Contraceptives
Throughout the antebellum era, slave breeding was a highly profitable investment. Slaves were scarce. The cheap labor they provided in plantations wasn’t cheap anymore and slave children sold like wildfire.
The couple of years following the prohibition of slave importation...
Latest News
The Heroro-Nama Genocide: Germany’s Brutal Genocide in Namibia in the early 20th Century
The Herero and Namaqua Genocide is considered to have been the first genocide of the 20th century. It took place between 1904 and 1907 in German South-West Africa(modern day Namibia), during the Herero Wars.
People & Politics
Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s First President, and the Last African Independence Leader from the 1960s Dies at 97
Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s founding president and one of Africa’s last surviving liberation leaders, has died at a military hospital in Lusaka, where he was being treated for pneumonia. He was 97.
Society & Culture
Artefacts Looted From Ethiopia 150 Years Ago Withdrawn From Uk Auction After Ethiopia’s Appeal
Mr Madu -
Two artefacts that were stolen during colonial-era looting by British forces in Ethiopia have been withdrawn from auction after the Ethiopian government appealed in a letter.
Facts
World’s Third Largest Diamond Discovered in Botswana
The diamond firm Debswana has announced the discovery in Botswana of a 1,098-carat stone that it described as the third largest of its kind in the world.
History
The Earliest Obtainable Map of the Whole Continent of Africa
Mapped by Sebastian Münster, the map below is the earliest obtainable map of the whole continent of Africa. The map was published in the 1552 edition of Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia.
