The Lei Áurea abolishes slavery throughout Brazil

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 3 May 1888, Princess Regent Isabel opened the parliamentary session with a speech urging lawmakers to remove slavery from Brazilian law. The address framed abolition as a national aspiration and...

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....

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,...

Decree 528 declared entry generally open to people considered able to work, but excepted Indigenous people from Asia and Africa, who could enter only with authorization from Congress under...

The Penal Code promulgated by Decree 847 placed capoeira in a chapter on “vagrants and capoeiras” and prescribed imprisonment for practicing it in public. Capoeira had developed through African...

The republican Penal Code of 1890 made practices described by the state as spiritism, magic, or unauthorized healing punishable under provisions on public order and health. It did not name Candomblé...

The Constitution promulgated on 24 February 1891 created the republican framework but excluded illiterate people and beggars from voting. The text did not name race as a voting criterion, yet the...