Berlin Conference opens amid European competition for Africa

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...

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...

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,...

The Brussels General Act created measures for suppressing African slave trading, including controls on arms and movement in designated regions. It was shaped by African resistance and anti-slavery...

Organized by Trinidadian lawyer Henry Sylvester Williams, this meeting brought activists from Africa, the Caribbean, Britain, and the United States into a shared political forum. It challenged...