Life Aboard a Slave Ship (History.com) Video: TV-PG, 4:02 (graphic content) From approximately 1525 to 1866, 12.5 million Africans were forcibly transported across the Middle Passage to serve as slaves in the New World. Life aboard slave ships was agonizing and dangerous; nearly 2 million slaves would perish on their journey across the Atlantic.
The Racism of 19th-Century Advertisements Illustrated advertising cards invoked ethnic stereotypes, using black women as foils in order to appeal to white consumers. Image: A trade card for Dilworth's Coffee, Philadelphia via Flickr (JSTOR Daily) After decades of presenting the archetypal American consumer as white and female, advertisers are slowly broadening their imagery to include
The Little-Known Southern Underground Railroad Into Mexico Is an Important Piece of Black History Image: Routes of the underground railroad (Remezcla) In July 1863, numerous local newspapers throughout Texas reported that three enslaved Africans “stole a bale of cotton” and used the bundle to float across the Rio Grande and into neighboring Mexico, where
He Fought for His Freedom in the Revolution Then His Sons Were Sold Into Slavery Jude Hall was one of the most revered black veterans of the American Revolution. That didn't stop the kidnappers from targeting his boys. (History.com) Born into slavery before the American Revolution, Jude Hall fought valiantly in several of the war’s
The Underground Kitchen That Funded the Civil Rights Movement Georgia Gilmore’s cooking fueled the Montgomery bus boycott. Photo: Georgia Gilmore poses for photographers after testifying as a defense witness in the bus boycott trial of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., March 21, 1956, in Montgomery. (Associated Press) (Atlas Obscura) On December 5, 1955, four
It’s time to recognize Sally Hemings as a first lady of the United States Photo: A man reads a plaque about Sally Hemings at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's estate in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday, June 16, 2018. (Steve Ruark / Associated Press) (Los Angeles Times) It is now widely understood that my ancestor Sally Hemings,
Lincoln moved to end slavery on New Year’s Day 1863. It went on for three more years. Image: The first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation before President Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet, painted by F.B. Carpenter. (Library of Congress) (Washington Post) On New Year’s morning of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln hosted a three-hour reception in the White
The Unsolved Mystery of the First People Killed During the Civil Rights Movement Law enforcement knew who killed Harry and Harriette Moore on Christmas in 1951. So why wasn’t justice served? Photo: Harriette and Harry Moore. (Credit: The Washington Post via Getty Images) (History.com) It was a double celebration: Christmas, and the Moores’ 25th
Terrorized African-Americans Found Their Champion in Civil War Hero Robert Smalls The formerly enslaved South Carolinian declared that whites had killed 53,000 African-Americans, but few took the explosive claim seriously—until now Image: Harper’s Weekly reports on “The Steamer ‘Planter’ and Her Captor,” June 14, 1862 (Library of Congress Prints and photographs division) (Smithsonian) In May
The Photos That Lifted Up the Black Is Beautiful Movement For over 50 years, the photographer Kwame Brathwaite captured African-American beauty and fashion, giving visual power to black power. Image: Untitled (Photo shoot at a school for one of the many modeling groups who had begun to embrace natural hairstyles in the 1960s), 1966. Credit: