Louis-Benoit Zamor is best known for helping to send French Aristocrat Madame Jeanne du Barry to the guillotine during the French Revolution (1789-1794). Born in Chittagong, India (present-day Bengal), probably of Siddi ancestry (the Siddi were Indians of African descent), Zamor’s birth year is generally … Read MoreLouis-Benoit Zamor (1762-1820)
Josina Mutemba Machel was a revolutionary Mozambican fighter for FRELIMO who, like thousands of women, fought for independence for her country until she died at the age of 25. She was born Josina Abiathar Muthemba on August 10, 1945, in the southern province of Inhambane. … Read MoreJosina Machel (1945-1971)
National heroine and revered freedom fighter Juana Ramírez, popularly known as “La Avanzadora” (The Advancer), was born January 12, 1790 in Chaguaramal, Monagas State, Venezuela. Her enslaved African mother, Guadalupe, was purchased by her putative father, Spanish army general Andrés Rojas. As a child she … Read MoreJuana Ramírez (1790 -1856)
Michael de Frietas, later known as Michael Abdul Malik and Michael X, was a controversial black revolutionary figure born in Port-au-Spain, Trinidad in 1933. He was mixed-race. Iona Brown, his mother, was working-class and a known African spiritualist in their community in Trinidad. His estranged father, Emmanuel de Frietas, was Portuguese and … Read MoreMichael X (1933-1975)
Foday Saybana Sankoh was the founder and leader of the Sierra Leone rebel group, Revolutionary United Front (RUF), during the Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002). That conflict, the first civil war in the nation’s history, resulted in the death of an estimated fifty thousand people … Read MoreFoday Saybana Sankoh (1937–2003)
