*Robben Island was established on this date in 1448. Robben Island is a roughly oval landmass in Table Bay, 4.3 miles west of the coast of Bloubergstrand, north of Cape Town, South Africa. It is a former maximum-security prison used by Dutch and British colonizers during the apartheid regime. It takes its name from the […]
learn more*On this date in c 1456, Cape Verde is celebrated. Cape Verde is an archipelago and island country in the central Atlantic Ocean near West Africa. Officially, the Republic of Cabo Verde consists of ten volcanic islands with a combined land area of about 1,557 sq mi. Before the arrival of whites, the Cape Verde Islands […]
learn more*Hispaniola was founded on this date in 1492. It is an island of African, indigenous Taino people in the Caribbean archipelago, the Greater Antilles. It is the most populous island in the West Indies and the region’s second-largest after Cuba. The island is divided into two sovereign nations: the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic to the east and French / Haitian Creole-speaking Haiti to the west. […]
learn more*Guadeloupe is celebrated on this date in 1493. This archipelago and overseas island group was part of the Middle Passage. It was a region of colonial France in the Caribbean. It consists of six inhabited islands, Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galante, and La Désirade, and the two inhabited Îles des Saintes—as well as many uninhabited islands and outcroppings. […]
learn more*The Treaty of Tordesillas or Tratado de Tordesilhas was signed on this date in 1494. It was signed in at Tordesillas, Spain, and authenticated at Setubal, Portugal, and showed the 15th-century intersection between Africa and European slavery. The treaty divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between the Portuguese Empire and the Crown of Castile, along […]
learn more*The birth of Hernando de Soto, who was born on this date in 1496, is affirmed. He was a Spanish explorer, slave trader, and conquistador involved in the Middle Passage. His expeditions in Nicaragua and the Yucatan Peninsula included the conquest of the Inca Empire in Peru. He led the first European expedition deep into […]
learn more*The state of Bahia in Brazil from 1500 is remembered on this date. This is a former Portuguese/African slave region.
learn more*Abolitionism in South America is celebrated on this date in 1500. The Valladolid debate (1550–1551) was the first moral debate in European history to discuss the rights and treatment of indigenous people by European colonizers. Held in the Colegio de San Gregorio, in the Spanish city of Valladolid, it was a moral and theological debate about the […]
learn more*Black history and American abortion are affirmed on this date in 1500. African women endured many crimes against humanity as part of the Middle Passage. White rape from enslavers and forced childbearing to supply labor for the slave base agrarian culture of the 13 colonies, Antebellum South, and more. Beginning in the 17th century, abortion and […]
learn moreOn this date of Cinco de Mayo, we look briefly at the history of Africans in Latin (Central and South) America and the Caribbean.
learn more*From the beginning of U. S. history, American Native populations and Africans had a historical relationship of both cooperation and confrontation.
learn more*Afro Dominicans, also known as African or Black Dominicans, are celebrated on this date in 1500. They are Dominicans of predominant Black African ancestry. In the early 1500s, the Spanish Crown began fully participating in the Middle Passage. The Santo Domingo colony, the only European possession yet in America, had already devastated the Taino, Lucayan […]
learn more*On this date, we affirm the institution of Chattel Slavery in the United States of America. Spain instituted this episode in Puerto Rico and Florida circa 1500. Ponce de Leon, Don Hernan Cortez, Christopher Columbus, and others brokered kidnapped Africans from Africa to support the Middle Passage to the United States. A chattel slave is an enslaved person who is permanently […]
learn more*On this date in 1502, the island of Saint Helena was discovered. Founded by the Portuguese Armada, it is a remote British overseas territory. Saint Helena is a volcanic and tropical island in the South Atlantic Ocean, some 1,165 miles west of mainland Africa. Geographically, Angola and Namibia are the closest nations. Between January and May […]
learn more*The birth of Estevanico is celebrated on this date in c 1503. Estevanico was a Black North African interpreter with Spain’s exploration of the Americas. He was a native of Azamor on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. In Spain before 1527, he was baptized as a Catholic and became the slave of Andrés Dorantes de […]
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