Boston protests the capture of Anthony Burns

Colombia passed a law to end slavery from the following January. Enslavers received compensation, while formerly enslaved people did not receive comparable reparations for their labor. The measure...

Sojourner Truth addressed the women’s rights convention in Akron, challenging assumptions that separated womanhood from the experiences of Black women. Accounts of her speech differ; the famous...

Freedom seekers and allies resisted an enslaver’s attempt to capture men at William Parker’s home in Pennsylvania. The confrontation ended with the enslaver’s death. Community self-defense...

Black and white activists rescued William Henry from detention in Syracuse and helped him reach Canada. The rescue turned opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act into collective action. It showed how...

The law ending slavery in Colombia came into force. Freedom was a result of legal reform and long histories of resistance, flight, and negotiation by enslaved people. Equal access to land and secure...

Federal authorities escorted Anthony Burns through Boston and returned him to Virginia despite extensive protests. The use of troops showed that slavery relied on state power beyond plantation...

Ramón Castilla decreed the abolition of slavery. Afro-Peruvians’ struggles for freedom belonged to a broader conflict over a colonial institution surviving after independence. Ending legal enslavement...

The Supreme Court rejected Dred Scott’s freedom claim and declared that people of African descent could not be US citizens under its interpretation of the Constitution. His struggle exposed racism...

Sarah Parker Remond spoke in Warrington about enslavement and its consequences, including the treatment of women. A Black woman addressed international audiences in her own voice. Her campaigning...

British forces attacked Te Kohia pā after resistance to the disputed Waitara purchase. Wiremu Kīngi opposed the sale of land over which others also held rights. Colonial insistence on taking...