An abolitionist poster from Massachusetts which condemns the Fugitive Slave Law and the Massachusetts politicians who voted for it, 1850

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850: Annotated

The Fugitive Slave Act erased the most basic of constitutional rights for enslaved people and incentivized US Commissioners to support kidnappers.
Precious Newberry, a United States Postal Service mail handler, works to unload her mail truck at the Processing and Distribution Center after collecting mail on the busiest mailing day of the year for the U.S. Postal Service on December 14, 2015 in Miami, Florida.

How Mail Delivery Has Shaped America

The United States Postal Service is under federal scrutiny. It’s not the first time.
James G. Birney

The Power of Pamphlets in the Anti-Slavery Movement

Black-authored print was central to James G. Birney’s conversion from enslaver to abolitionist and presidential candidate.
A full-page newspaper advertisement published in the New York Times on March 29, 1960. It was paid for by the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom in the South.

“Heed Their Rising Voices”: Annotated

In 1960, an ad placed in the New York Times to defend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights activists touched off a landmark libel suit.
A page from The Angolite that features a photograph of a prison guard holding a shotgun while watching prisoners work in a field.

Slavery and the Modern-Day Prison Plantation

“Except as punishment for a crime,” reads the constitutional exception to abolition. In prison plantations across the United States, slavery thrives.
American athlete Nancy Voorhees clears the bar as she trains for the high jump event ahead of the 1922 Women's World Games, during a training session at Weequanic Park in Newark, New Jersey, 1922

Sport in America: A Reading List

Covering the colonial era to the present, this annotated bibliography demonstrates the topical and methodological diversity of sport studies in the United States.
Frederick Douglass

“What to the Slave is The Fourth of July?”: Annotated

On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a Fourth of July speech that became his most famous public oration.
A Black man in the dock following claims of a plot by enslaved people in New York to revolt and level New York City with a series of fires, at an unspecified court in New York, 1741

Was the Conspiracy That Gripped New York in 1741 Real?

Rumors that enslaved Black New Yorkers were planning a revolt spread across Manhattan even more quickly than fires for which they were being blamed.
Ruby Bridges

Chainlink Chronicle: Celebrating Black History in Louisiana

An exploration of one prison newspaper’s commitment to celebrating Black History with a unique focus on its home state.
Robert Smalls, born in Beaufort, SC, April 1839

Using Data to Discover and Explore the Stories of Enslaved People

Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade brings together datasets from multiple sources in a single free website that anyone can use.