Felix petitions Massachusetts lawmakers for Black freedom

An uprising associated with the Akan leader Tacky began at St Mary, Jamaica, and expanded into a broad anti-slavery war. Insurgents attacked plantation infrastructure and sought to overthrow the...

A royal decree declared enslaved people arriving in mainland Portugal free, an important but geographically limited measure. It did not free people in Brazil or Portuguese African territories, and the...

An uprising began on plantations along the Canje River and rapidly spread through Dutch Berbice. Cuffy and other leaders organized a large insurgent force and negotiated with colonial authorities...

Crispus Attucks, a sailor of African and Indigenous ancestry, was among five people killed by British soldiers. Later patriot memory made the event a symbol of liberty while often obscuring...

In Somerset’s Case, Lord Mansfield ruled that James Somerset could not be forcibly removed from England and sold abroad under the claim advanced by his enslaver. The judgment did not abolish slavery...

The colony restricted the importation of enslaved people and imposed penalties on traders, while existing slavery and Rhode Island’s participation in the Atlantic economy continued. The act came after...

The organization formed to assist free Black people illegally held in bondage and later broadened its work against slavery. Its founding preceded the Declaration of Independence and shows abolitionist...

During the American Revolution, Virginia’s royal governor offered freedom to enslaved people belonging to rebels who joined British forces. The offer was a military strategy, not a principled...

The Declaration announced that “all men are created equal” while its authors and the new republic remained entangled in slavery. The contradiction was challenged by Black writers, petitioners,...

Vermont adopted a constitution prohibiting adult slavery, an unusually early formal restriction in the region. The provision did not resolve all forms of coerced labor or guarantee equal civic...