Fourteenth Amendment establishes birthright citizenship

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 act recognized national citizenship and declared equal civil rights for people born in the United States, including formerly enslaved people. It answered Black Codes and racial violence that...

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...

Spain’s law abolished slavery in Puerto Rico, with transitional service obligations and compensation for enslavers. Enslaved people and abolitionists had campaigned for freedom, while the law sought...