Spanish authorities execute Túpac Amaru II and Micaela Bastidas

Prince Hall and other petitioners asked Massachusetts lawmakers to end enslavement. They argued that freedom was a natural right and challenged people who condemned British oppression while...

Scotland’s Court of Session rejected John Wedderburn’s claim to hold Joseph Knight in perpetual service and remove him abroad. Knight’s legal action challenged enslavement brought from a Caribbean...

Pennsylvania passed a gradual abolition law after antislavery campaigning. People already enslaved remained in bondage, while children born afterward could be held until age twenty-eight. The law...

Túpac Amaru II captured the Spanish official Antonio de Arriaga, beginning a major rebellion. Micaela Bastidas played a central organizational role. Resistance to forced labor, abusive officials,...

Túpac Amaru II’s forces executed Antonio de Arriaga after his capture. The act openly challenged Spanish colonial authority and officials associated with abusive extraction. It escalated a rebellion...

Elizabeth Freeman and Brom won a Massachusetts freedom suit against John Ashley. They used the state constitution’s equality principle to challenge enslavement. The decision demonstrates how...

Richard Allen and Absalom Jones founded the Free African Society in Philadelphia. Members supported people during illness and assisted widows and children. Such independent institutions strengthened...

Campaigners formed the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Petitioning, evidence gathering, and public mobilization targeted British participation in trafficking. Its institutional...

Benjamin Banneker sent Thomas Jefferson his almanac and a letter challenging slavery and racial prejudice. A Black mathematician and astronomer used his own work to confront claims of intellectual...

A mass uprising began in northern Saint-Domingue during the night of 22–23 August. Enslaved Africans and their descendants attacked the plantation order. Their collective struggle transformed an...