François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, also Toussaint Bréda, was a leader of the Haitian Revolution. Born in Saint-Domingue, in a long struggle for independence Toussaint led enslaved Africans and Afro-Haitians to victory over French colo...

Olaudah Equiano also known as Gustavus Vassa, was one of the most prominent Africans involved in the British movement of the abolition for the slave trade. His autobiography depicted the horrors of slavery and helped influence British lawma...

Phillis Wheatley was the first published African-American female poet. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at the age of seven or eight and transported to North America. She was purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston, who tau...

Jean-Jacques Dessalines was a leader of the Haitian Revolution and the first ruler of an independent Haiti under the 1801 constitution. Initially regarded as governor-general, Dessalines later named himself Emperor Jacques I of Haiti (1804–...

Louis Delgrès was a leader of the movement in Guadeloupe resisting reoccupation (and thus the reinstitution of slavery) by Napoleonic France in 1802. Delgrès was mulatto, born free in Saint-Pierre, Martinique. A military officer for Rev...

La Mulâtresse Solitude was a historical figure and heroine in the fight against slavery on French Guadeloupe. She has been the subject of legends and a symbol of women's resistance in the struggle against slavery in the history of the islan...

Nat Turner's Rebellion (also known as the Southampton Insurrection) was a rebellion of enslaved Virginians that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831, led by Nat Turner. The rebels killed between 55 and 65 people, at le...

The Slave Trade Act sometimes called the Slave Trade Act 1807 or the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 1807, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed on 25 March 1807, with the title of "An Act for the Abolition of the Slave...

Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing. He stood...

Anténor Firmin was a Haitian anthropologist, journalist, and politician. Firmin is best known for his book De l'Égalité des Races Humaines (English: On the Equality of Human Races), which was published as a rebuttal to French writer Count A...

Booker Taliaferro Washington was an African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American community. Washington was of...

Scientist and early advocate for industrial uses for farm crops (bio-energy). Carver earned a B.S. from the Iowa Agricultural College in 1894 and an M.S. in 1896. He became a member of the faculty of Iowa State College and then Tuskegee Ins...

Matthew Alexander Henson was an American explorer and associate of Robert Peary during various expeditions, the most famous being a 1909 expedition which claimed to be the first to reach the Geographic North Pole. Henson met Commander Ro...

W.E.B. Du Bois was an early African-American civil rights leader and scholar and the first non-white person to receive a doctorate from Harvard University. He was an outspoken critic of the social inequalities that existed in the US during...

John Arthur Johnson, better known as Jack Johnson and nicknamed the “Galveston Giant”, was an American boxer and arguably the best heavyweight of his generation. He was the first black Heavyweight Champion of the World (1908-1915), a feat w...