Joaquim Nabuco brings two freedom letters to Ave Libertas

On 7 September 1884, Porto Alegre held a public ceremony associated with emancipation and the local Centro Abolicionista. The city’s surviving records document the organized campaign and the public...

At a public festival in Recife’s Teatro Santa Isabel, the society installed a new board, heard speeches and music, and delivered twenty letters of manumission. Leonor Porto presented the documents....

João Ramos and eleven associates founded a secret abolitionist group in Recife, first called Relâmpago and later known as Clube do Cupim. It helped coordinate escapes toward Ceará through routes...

A meeting record cited by historians lists 96$000 réis paid for twelve passage fares. Club correspondence used coded terms such as “Englishmen” for enslaved people escaping toward Ceará. This...

To mark one year since Ceará abolished slavery, Ave Libertas organized a public celebration in Recife with a civic procession, music, religious ceremony, and speeches. At the theater, several...

Minutes of the Clube do Cupim record planning an escape operation aboard a vessel carrying 250 sacks of manioc flour toward Macau, Rio Grande do Norte. The cargo could help conceal people from...

Law no. 3,270, enacted on 28 September 1885, regulated gradual extinction and provided freedom for some enslaved people aged 60 or older. Those freed at 60 could be required to provide up to three...

The group’s last recorded session dissolved the Clube do Cupim amid persecution and concern over exposure. Historians caution that the dissolution may have been a protective public gesture: records...

Law no. 3,310 of 15 October 1886 revoked provisions imposing the sentence of lashes on enslaved defendants, including part of the 1835 law that had imposed this punishment for certain offenses. It...

The first issue of A Redempção began a recurring “Crônica de Anos” column that named captains of the bush and other agents of recapture. Its editor, Antônio Bento, made the paper part of an...