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The 1521 Santo Domingo Slave Revolt in the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola took place around the time of Christmas festivities of 1521. It is…

The Gloucester County Conspiracy (September 1663), also known as the Servant’s Plot or Birkenhead’s Rebellion, is one of the first slave rebellions in America. This event set the stage for…

Béhanzin , born 1844 and died 10 December 1906 , in Blida , Algeria ), was the twelfth and last sovereign king of Dahomey , present-day Benin . He succeeded his father Glele (reign 1858 – 1889 ) and ruled between 1889 and 1894 . Since his signature was a shark and an egg, he was nicknamed “The…

The Dahomey Amazons (Fon:”Mino” or “Minon“) were a Fon all-female military regiment of the Kingdom of Dahomey which existed until 1904. They were so named by Western observers and historians due to their similarity to the…

Lewis Howard Latimer (September 4, 1848 – December 11, 1928) was a inventor and patent draftsman. His inventions included an evaporative air conditioner, an improved process for manufacturing carbon filaments…

The Code Noir (French pronunciation: ​[kɔd nwaʁ], Black Code) was a decree passed by the French King Louis XIV in 1685 defining the conditions of slavery in the French colonial…

Mathieu da Costa (sometimes d’Acosta) was a member of the exploring party of Pierre Dugua, the Sieur de Monts, and Samuel de Champlain that travelled from France to the New…

Maria Priscilla Thurston Williams (1866–1932) is credited as the first Black woman film producer for the silent crime drama The Flames of Wrath in 1923.  

Elizabeth Carter Brooks (1867-1951) was an American educator, social activist and architect. She was passionate about helping other African Americans achieve personal success and was one of the first to…

George Henry Jewett II (April 1870 – August 12, 1908) was an American athlete who became the first African-American football player at both the University of Michigan and Northwestern University,…