Princess Regent Isabel’s opening address calls for ending slavery

The newspaper published “O crime da Penha do Rio do Peixe,” reporting the murder of police delegate Joaquim Firmino de Araújo Lima, who had sheltered two people in an emancipation process and joined...

A Redempção returned to the killing of Joaquim Firmino in an article titled “Penha do Rio do Peixe.” Repeated coverage made the murder a public indictment of the slaveholding order and its allies....

On 10 March 1888, João Alfredo Correia de Oliveira formed a new imperial cabinet more willing to pursue the end of slavery. The cabinet change followed years of mass abolitionist mobilization,...

An editorial titled “Não se iludam os jornais” criticized proposals that would declare people free yet bind them to former owners’ labor. It described organized mass flight despite police blockades...

A later account cited in scholarship describes a major operation in Recife in which 119 enslaved people were embarked for escape toward the North. Their movement followed years of fugitives, free...

On 8 May 1888, Minister of Agriculture Rodrigo Augusto da Silva presented the government’s proposal for the complete abolition of slavery to the Chamber of Deputies. The bill moved rapidly in response...

On 10 May 1888, the Chamber of Deputies approved the proposal to abolish slavery. The rapid vote followed decades of Black resistance and a late-1880s surge in abolitionist mobilization. Parliamentary...

On 11 May 1888, the proposal approved by the Chamber reached the Senate, where a special committee was formed to report on it. The expedited review brought the question to its final legislative stage....

On 13 May 1888, the Senate approved the abolition bill and Princess Regent Isabel sanctioned Law no. 3,353, the Lei Áurea. Its two brief articles ended slavery in law across Brazil. The law did not...

In Fortaleza, the abolitionist association Perseverança e Porvir held a public session celebrating the end of slavery in Brazil. The meeting, attended by representatives of different social groups,...