Black History, Culture, and Rankings
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Samory Touré was an African king who built the powerful Wassoulou Empire across parts of present-day Guinea, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso. For roughly 17 years, he resisted French colonial expansion through military resistance, diplomacy and guerrilla warfare. The French eventually captured him in 1898 and sent him into exile in Gabon. […] TalkAfricana
On October 28, 1830, Josiah Henson crossed into Canada with his wife, Nancy, and their children, escaping slavery in the United States. But Henson’s journey did not end with his own freedom. He went on to help other Black people escape slavery and, near Dresden, Ontario, founded the Dawn Settlement, a community where formerly enslaved […] TalkAfricana
Moses “Daddy Moses” Wilkinson’s life was an extraordinary journey from slavery in Virginia to religious leadership in Africa. Born enslaved, Wilkinson escaped during the American Revolutionary War, became a Methodist preacher, led a congregation in Nova Scotia, and eventually crossed the Atlantic to help establish a Methodist church in Sierra Leone. Wilkinson was born enslaved […] TalkAfricana
George Boxley was a white American abolitionist and former slaveholder who turned against slavery and allegedly sought to lead one of Virginia’s most ambitious slave revolts. His plan to free enslaved Africans and seize key cities never materialized after it was exposed by an enslaved informant, setting off a chain of events that changed his […] TalkAfricana
Slavery produced countless victims and countless perpetrators. Most slave owners faded into obscurity, but Edwin Epps remains infamous because one of the men he enslaved survived to tell the world exactly what happened on his plantation. His memoir, Twelve Years a Slave, would eventually become the basis for the acclaimed 2013 film, ensuring that Epps’s […] TalkAfricana
When people think of slavery in America, they often picture plantation owners, politicians, and traders. Few imagine that some of slavery’s most passionate defenders stood behind church pulpits. One of the most influential was Benjamin Morgan Palmer, a celebrated American Presbyterian pastor whose sermons helped convince thousands of Christians that slavery was not only acceptable, […]…
Born into slavery around 1800 in Hoosick, New York, Myers rose from bondage to become one of the most important abolitionists in the state. For more than two decades, he and his wife Harriet transformed their home in Albany into a refuge for freedom seekers escaping slavery, helping thousands on their journey toward freedom. Stephen […] TalkAfricana
Louis Rwagasore was a Burundian prince, nationalist leader, and the country’s first elected Prime Minister who became the face of Burundi’s independence movement and pushed for an immediate end to Belgian colonial rule in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Just weeks after taking office in 1961, he was assassinated. Decades later, evidence emerged linking […] TalkAfricana
Mekatilili wa Menza was a Kenyan anti-colonial leader from the Giriama people who became one of the most formidable opponents of British rule in East Africa during the early twentieth century. Her resistance to colonial policies was so influential that British authorities arrested and exiled her twice in an attempt to silence her. Mekatilili wa […] TalkAfricana
At a time when Kentucky was a slave state and many churches either defended slavery or remained silent, John Gregg Fee preached that slavery was a sin against both God and humanity. For that, he was disowned by his slaveholding father, threatened by violent mobs, driven from his home, and ultimately forced into exile. Born […] TalkAfricana
