US Congress enacts the Civil Rights Act of 1866

The Senate approved a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, sending it to the House for consideration. Passage reflected the Civil War, decades of antislavery struggle, and Black military...

The House passed the amendment abolishing slavery, which was later ratified by the states. Black activists had long demanded abolition and continued to press for equal rights and protection after...

Union troops arrived in Galveston and announced that enslaved people in Texas were free under federal policy. The announcement came more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation and...

Black Jamaicans protested land dispossession, unequal justice, and poverty after emancipation. The rebellion and violent colonial response exposed the coercive conditions that survived formal freedom....

The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, abolishing slavery except as punishment for crime. Emancipation resulted from generations of resistance, the Civil War, Black military service, and political...

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...