Category: History
Explore the Daily Alphas archive of overlooked people, resistance, achievement and hidden history.
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PRINCE KLAAS: THE MAN ANTIGUA’S SLAVEHOLDERS FEARED
Explore Prince Klaas, Antigua’s alleged freedom plot of 1736, his execution and historians’ questions about the surviving colonial evidence.
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Gaspar Yanga: The African Who Challenged Spain and Built a Free Community in Mexico
Explore Gaspar Yanga’s resistance in Veracruz, the conflict of 1609 and the negotiations behind a recognized free Black community in colonial Mexico.
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CATHAY WILLIAMS: THE WOMAN WHO BECAME A BUFFALO SOLDIER TO BE FREE
Cathay Williams was born into slavery in Missouri in the early-to-mid 1840s, but the life she eventually created for herself would take…
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LOKHAY: THE WOMAN WHO ESCAPED SLAVERY TWICE
Discover Lohkay, also called Lokhay, in Sint Maarten’s oral history: escape from slavery, survival in the hills and the limits of archival…
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SAM SHARPE: THE ENSLAVED PREACHER WHO HELPED BRING DOWN JAMAICAN SLAVERY
Samuel Sharpe organized Jamaica’s 1831 Christmas strike. Its escalation into the Baptist War helped increase pressure for British emancipation.
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KWAKU: THE ENSLAVED AFRICAN WHO WROTE HIMSELF TO FREEDOM
In 1740, an enslaved African man in Suriname did something extraordinary. He picked up a pen and wrote to the people who…
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CUFFY: THE ENSLAVED AFRICAN WHO NEARLY TOOK A COLONY
In 1763, an enslaved African named Cuffy helped lead one of the largest slave rebellions in the Americas. In Dutch-controlled Berbice, thousands…
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QUEEN NANNY: THE WOMAN THE BRITISH COULD NOT DEFEAT
By Jamahl Hokstam In the mountains of Jamaica, there was once a woman who built a community the British Empire could not…
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The Legend Of Shaka Zulu
History has a habit of simplifying powerful people—especially when they didn’t fit neatly into European narratives. Shaka Zulu is often remembered as…