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Slavery

Title page of Memoirs and Poems of Phillis Wheatley, with the subtitle "A Native African and a Slave" and dedicated to the friends of the Africans.
Source

Memoirs and Poems of Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley (c.1753-1784) was an enslaved African American poet and author. Despite this, the work Memoirs and Poems of Phillis Wheatley was compiled and the memoirs themselves written by Margaretta Matilda Odell, a supposed "collateral descendent of Mrs.

Image of a list written in script. Explanation in source annotation.
Teaching

Short Teaching Module: Global Approaches to Maritime Trade in Colonial North America

Traditional narratives in American history, especially in colonial history, tend to focus primarily on British policy and British trade networks. Taking a global approach to the maritime trade of British America in the colonial era provides a better understanding of the actual economy, however.

The first page of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, titled An Act to Organize the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas and passed by the thirty-third Congress of the United States
Source

Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854

By the 1850s, tensions in the United States were falling in around a major issue: slavery. As the country expanded relentlessly westward and more territories and states were coming into existence, the question of slave states versus free states grew in its intensity.

View of the Coffee Plantation Marienbosch in Surinam
Source

View of the Coffee Plantation Marienbosch in Surinam

This painting is a view of the Marienbosch coffee plantation along the banks of the Commewijne River in the Dutch colony of Surinam (present-day Suriname). Alongside coffee, the plantation also produced cotton and cocoa. The artist, Willem de Klerk, never visited Surinam.

Map of the coast of Liberia, with a relief shown by hachures. It shows boundary of tribes, mission stations, colonist towns, and native towns.
Review

Maps of Liberia, 1830 to 1870

This collection offers a unique opportunity to study black history and culture, both in the diaspora as well as in Africa itself.
Black and white photograph of what appears to be a black family from what appears to be the antebellum period, with several children and a few adult men and women, standing in front of a white house with a chimney. Behind the house is a wooded area.
Review

Saving Slave Houses

The author [discusses things] such as preservation and documentation, to show the relevance and impact of work that deals with the history of enslavement.
Drawing of two men, with a white man that is presumably Thomas Clarkson in the foreground, and a black man in the background. They are both dressed in colonial-era clothing.
Review

The Abolition of Slavery Project

By breaking up the site into different areas of focus, such as enslavement itself and abolition, it allows itself to be easily navigable by students and scholars alike.
Image of a colored choropleth map
Review

Lynching in the United States: 1883-1941

...this source expands the subject of lynching's to include other minority groups in the US beyond black Americans, as well as white Americans.
Source

Negro Slavery Described by a Negro

Ashton Warner lived in the British Caribbean colony of Saint Vincent in the early 1800s. He was raised free before being re-enslaved at the age of ten. In this passage, he describes his experience laboring on a sugar plantation.

Black and white engraving of free people of colour in Saint Dominigue, two women and a man.
Review

A Colony in Crisis: The Saint Domingue Grain Shortage of 1789

...the site’s method of limiting each translated entry to about 1000 words is a great way to foster greater engagement with these sources without being too much to handle at once.