The Malê revolt challenges slavery in Salvador, Bahia

A mass strike and uprising began in western Jamaica during Christmas. Samuel Sharpe and other organizers used church networks to coordinate a demand for freedom and wages; the movement escalated...

The act ended slavery in most British colonies, with implementation beginning in 1834, but imposed an apprenticeship system and compensated enslavers rather than the formerly enslaved. Enslaved people...

Delegates at a national antislavery convention adopted a declaration demanding the immediate abolition of slavery. The meeting followed years of Black organizing, petitions, and resistance, and...

Three days after the national antislavery convention, a group of women met and organized a female antislavery society. Black women were members and leaders, although later narratives often...

The Slavery Abolition Act took effect across most British colonies. Many adults were placed in “apprenticeship,” a coercive labor system that required continued unpaid work for former enslavers....

The apprenticeship system ended, completing formal emancipation in most British Caribbean colonies. Formerly enslaved people celebrated freedom while confronting landlessness, wage coercion, and...

The society formed after the British abolition campaign turned toward global abolition and opposition to apprenticeship. Its transnational activism connected reformers, formerly enslaved speakers, and...

Mende captives rebelled aboard the Spanish schooner Amistad while being transported illegally within Cuba. They sought to return to Africa, but the ship was intercepted and the survivors were held...

The Court ruled that the Mende captives had been illegally kidnapped and enslaved and could not be returned to Spanish claimants. The judgment recognized their right to resist unlawful captivity,...

A decree abolished slavery as the country faced civil conflict. Afro-Uruguayans had long resisted bondage and served in military forces; emancipation did not remove racial inequality or the economic...