Jean-Baptiste Belley-Mars, who represented Saint-Domingue in the French National Convention in Paris in 1794, is widely credited with persuading that body to abolish slavery in France and its overseas colonies. Belley-Mars as a boy was kidnapped by slave catchers on the island of Goree near … Read MoreJean-Baptiste Belley-Mars (ca. 1747-ca. 1805)
Louisa “Lulu” Matilda Jacobs, teacher, equal rights activist, and entrepreneur, was born a slave in Edenton, North Carolina, on October 19, 1833. She was the daughter of congressman and newspaper editor Samuel Tredwell Sawyer and his mixed-race enslaved mistress Harriet Jacobs. Louisa Jacobs was educated … Read MoreLouisa Matilda Jacobs (1833-1917)
Thomas Fuller, often called “the Virginia Calculator,” was born in 1710, somewhere between the “Slave Coast” of West Africa (present-day Liberia) and the Kingdom of Dahomey (modern-day Benin). When the pre-colonial scramble for slaves replaced the earlier trade in gold, Fuller was snatched from his … Read MoreThomas Fuller (1710-1790)
Elizabeth A. Parkhill Gloucester, the wife of the Rev. Dr. James Gloucester, was an abolitionist, a supporter of the Underground Railroad, business owner, and considered one of the wealthiest women of her race at the time of her death in 1883. Born in Virginia to … Read MoreElizabeth A. Parkhill Gloucester (1817-1883)
Tunis Campbell was one of the most successful black politicians in the Reconstruction Era. Born the eighth of 10 children to free black parents, John Campbell, a blacksmith and his wife (name unknown) in Middlebrook, New Jersey on April 1, 1812, Campbell trained for missionary … Read MoreTunis Gulic Campbell (1812–1891)
Henrietta Smith Bowers Duterte (pronounced Dew-tier), the first female undertaker in the nation, was born free in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was one of 13 children born to John Bowers and Henrietta Smith Bowers in July 1817. The Bowers family was originally from Baltimore, Maryland but … Read MoreHenrietta S. Bowers Duterte (1817-1903)
Often misinterpreted to mean that African Americans as individuals are considered three-fifths of a person or that they are three-fifths of a citizen of the U.S., the three-fifths clause (Article I, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution of 1787) in fact declared that for purposes … Read MoreThe Three-Fifths Clause of the United States Constitution (1787)
Luis Gonzaga Pinto da Gama (Luis Gama) was a Brazilian poet, journalist, legal activist, abolitionist leader, and former slave. He was born in 1830, a free mulatto in Salvador, the capital of Brazil’s Bahia province. His mother, Luisa Mahin, was a black woman from Ghana … Read MoreLuis Gama (1830-1882)
Abolitionist and civil rights activist William Lambert was born in Trenton, New Jersey in 1817, the son of a manumitted father and a freeborn mother. As a young man Lambert was educated by abolitionist Quakers. Twenty-three year old Lambert arrived in Detroit, Michigan in 1840 … Read MoreWilliam Lambert (1817-1890)
Austin Steward, author, businessman, abolitionist, and temperance leader, was born a slave in Prince William County, Virginia to Robert and Susan Steward sometime around 1793. By the age of seven he was working as a house slave on the plantation of Capt. William Helm. The … Read MoreAustin Steward (1793-1869)
