Abdias do Nascimento founds the Teatro Experimental do Negro

Decree-Law 37 of 2 December 1937 dissolved Brazil’s political parties under the Estado Novo dictatorship. The Frente Negra Brasileira had converted itself into a political party in 1936; it could no...

Decree-Law 406 reorganized rules for foreign entry and residence, including the operation of national immigration quotas and requirements for visas. It extended a restrictive framework that had been...

Decree-Law 1,402 established procedures for union recognition, registration, representation, and contributions. The Vargas regime recognized unions within a state-controlled framework, restricting...

Decree-Law 2,162 instituted a statutory minimum wage and set regional schedules. A wage floor recognized workers as people with claims on employers, but protections depended on which sectors and...

Decree-Law 5,452 approved the Consolidation of Labor Laws (CLT), organizing many existing labor rules. Its exclusions left domestic service and much rural work outside key protections. Since...

Decree-Law 7,967 established immigration rules and stated that policy should preserve and develop in Brazil’s ethnic composition the “most convenient” characteristics of European ancestry. Its...

Decree-Law 8,079 revised Article 7 of the CLT, listing domestic workers and rural workers among those to whom most provisions did not apply. The legal split was not written as a race clause, but it...

The first issue of Quilombo: vida, problemas e aspirações do negro appeared on 9 December 1948, linked to the Teatro Experimental do Negro. Under Abdias do Nascimento’s coordination, the periodical...

Law 1,390, sanctioned on 3 July 1951, classified certain acts motivated by racial or color prejudice as criminal contraventions. The law followed public exposure of discrimination, including the...

Law 4,214 set out a labor framework for rural workers, including employment relations and access to labor protections. Its passage recognized a large workforce long left outside the main urban labor...