First International Congress of Black Writers and Artists opens in Paris

The Manchester congress brought trade unionists, students, and political organizers into a program demanding African self-government and an end to colonial exploitation. Women organizers and delegates...

The Charter established the United Nations and affirmed self-determination as a principle, while colonial empires remained in place. Delegates from colonized and newly independent societies pressed...

The General Assembly adopted a declaration stating that no one should be held in slavery or servitude. Women and delegates from the Global South, including Hansa Mehta of India, helped shape its...

Newly independent and anticolonial states met to oppose colonialism and racial discrimination and to assert political independence. Bandung widened South-South solidarity, building a diplomatic...

The supplementary convention addressed debt bondage, serfdom, forced marriage, and child transfer, widening international attention beyond the formal legal status of slavery. Its adoption followed...

Ghana’s independence from British colonial rule became a landmark for African and diasporic liberation movements. Nkrumah’s government welcomed Pan-African organizing and framed sovereignty as part of...

The conference gathered anticolonial parties and movements from across the continent, including organizations still fighting colonial rule. Its resolutions demanded independence and solidarity,...

People protested pass laws that controlled Black movement under apartheid. Police killed 69 people and injured many others. The massacre made apartheid a sharper international issue and linked...

Nigeria gained independence after British colonial rule. The new state entered international diplomacy as a major African polity, while its societies continued to reckon with the political and...

Resolution 1514 declared that colonial domination should end and tied self-determination to human rights. It did not erase the economic structures created by slavery and empire, but anticolonial...