Black History at a Glance

The triangular trade

Guns and cloth to Africa, enslaved people to the Americas, sugar and cotton back to Europe: every leg turned a profit.

💡 Did you know? No ship was to sail empty: that single calculation is what kept the system profitable for European ports for centuries.

The Middle Passage

Six to ten weeks chained below deck, often with less room than a coffin allows.

💡 Did you know? Roughly one in eight people did not survive the crossing. Shipowners factored those losses into their accounts in advance.

Brazil

Around five million people: nearly half of all arrivals, more than ten times the number taken to North America.

💡 Did you know? Less than four per cent of the whole trade went to what became the United States. Slavery is far less of an American story than it is usually told to be.

Quilombos

Palmares in north-eastern Brazil held out for almost a century and at times had tens of thousands of inhabitants.

💡 Did you know? Its last leader, Zumbi, was killed in 1695. The date is now Brazil's Black Consciousness Day and a public holiday.

Haiti

The insurgents defeated French, Spanish and British forces in turn and Napoleon's expeditionary army as well.

💡 Did you know? France only recognised Haiti in 1825, and demanded an enormous indemnity for doing so. The country paid off that debt for more than a century.

As a sailor

He carried a free Black seaman's borrowed papers and travelled to New York by train and steamboat.

💡 Did you know? The whole escape took less than twenty-four hours and hung on a conductor who barely glanced at the papers.

Her son

He had been illegally sold to Alabama; she sued and got him back.

💡 Did you know? It was the first time a Black woman in the United States sued a white man and won: in 1828, a generation before the Civil War.

Harriet Tubman

She returned some thirteen times and guided about seventy people out, including her own parents.

💡 Did you know? She later said she never lost a passenger. During the Civil War she also led an armed raid that freed more than 700 people.

Juneteenth

On that day in 1865 a Union general read the order of freedom aloud in Galveston, Texas; the proclamation was already two and a half years old.

💡 Did you know? The name is a portmanteau of „June“ and „nineteenth“. Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021.

The Lei Áurea

It ran to two sentences: slavery is abolished, all provisions to the contrary are revoked. Around 600,000 people were freed.

💡 Did you know? Princess Isabel signed it as regent. Eighteen months later the monarchy was gone: the disappointed landowners had withdrawn their loyalty.

Jim Crow laws

The name came from a stage character used by white performers to mock Black people.

💡 Did you know? In 1896 the Supreme Court declared segregation lawful under the formula „separate but equal“: it stood for 58 years.

Brown v. Board of Education

The justices ruled unanimously that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

💡 Did you know? The lawyer who argued the case, Thurgood Marshall, became the first Black justice on that same court 13 years later.

Rosa Parks

She was a seamstress and had been active in the civil rights organisation NAACP for years: hardly the tired lady of legend.

💡 Did you know? Nine months earlier 15-year-old Claudette Colvin had done exactly the same; the movement was looking for a test case it could win in court.

The solo

Until then jazz bands played collectively and intertwined; Armstrong pushed the soloist to the front.

💡 Did you know? His Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings are seen as the point where dance music turned into an art form.

Number 42

Since 1997 no major league player may take it on.

💡 Did you know? Once a year, on Jackie Robinson Day, every player wears it at the same time: shirts with no name, only the 42.

HeLa

The name is simply the first two letters of her first and last name.

💡 Did you know? To protect her anonymity it was claimed for years that the donor had been called „Helen Lane“.

The Lincoln Memorial

Around 250,000 people had come to the March on Washington.

💡 Did you know? The famous passage was improvised: Mahalia Jackson called out „Tell them about the dream!“, and King left his script behind.

Mississippi Goddam

She wrote it in under an hour after four girls were killed in the bombing.

💡 Did you know? Southern radio stations returned the record to the label snapped in half.

The Civil Rights Act

It banned discrimination based on race, colour, religion, national origin and sex: in restaurants, hotels, schools and at work.

💡 Did you know? President Johnson signed it and predicted his party had just lost the South for a generation. He was right.

The unknown African name

The surname „Little“ had been given to his family by a slaveholder.

💡 Did you know? The Nation of Islam gave the X to all members (where first names repeated, they were numbered): Malcolm X, Malcolm 2X, Malcolm 3X.

Loving v. Virginia

Richard and Mildred Loving had been arrested in their home state of Virginia simply for being married to each other.

💡 Did you know? History handed the case a perfect name: the ruling that legalised love across the colour line is called Loving.

Soweto

The trigger was an order to teach lessons in Afrikaans: the language of the people enforcing the system.

💡 Did you know? The photograph of twelve-year-old Hector Pieterson, dying in a classmate's arms, made Soweto impossible to ignore anywhere in the world.

1990

Millions watched live as he walked out of Victor Verster Prison with his fist raised.

💡 Did you know? Hardly anyone knew what he looked like by then: publishing photographs of him had been illegal in South Africa for 27 years.

Bill Clinton's

She was the first poet in that role since Robert Frost in 1961 and the first Black woman ever.

💡 Did you know? Clinton came from Arkansas, as she did; he had read her book as a teenager.