Spanish Cortes debates gradual emancipation for Puerto Rico

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...

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...

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...