Spain abolishes slavery in Puerto Rico

The amendment made people born or naturalized in the United States citizens and required states to provide due process and equal protection. It overturned the citizenship logic of Dred Scott, though...

Abolitionists in the Spanish parliament pressed for emancipation in Puerto Rico. Debate and organizing helped set the stage for the Moret Law and 1873 abolition, while slavery continued and the island...

The amendment barred federal and state governments from denying the vote because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Black voters and officeholders helped reshape Reconstruction...

The law freed children born to enslaved mothers after its enactment and some older people, while placing others in a patronato system of coerced labor. It was a limited step shaped by abolitionist...

Brazil’s Free Womb Law declared children born to enslaved women after the law’s passage legally free, while requiring them to remain with enslavers or state institutions for years. It was a gradualist...

The law formally ended slavery but required formerly enslaved people to remain under patronato, a labor regime that preserved coercive control. Resistance and pressure led to its early termination...

European governments opened a conference to regulate their territorial and commercial competition in Africa. No African state or community was represented as an equal participant. The conference’s...

The General Act included provisions against the slave trade in the Congo basin while formalizing rules for European claims and navigation. Its antislavery language operated within a colonial project...

The Spanish government brought legal slavery in Cuba to an end after a gradual transition that had included an apprenticeship-like regime. The delay reflected the political power of plantation...

Brazil’s Lei Áurea formally abolished slavery, making it the last country in the Americas to do so. The law followed sustained resistance by enslaved people, mass escapes, abolitionist mobilization,...