Emory Women Writers Resource Project
Enslaved and Free Blacks in Saint Domingue
This engraving pairs images of enslaved people and free blacks in four categories: dress, deportment, entertainment, and access to water. Although there are differences between the pairs, these are not as great as they might be.
Excerpt from Aguinaldo’s Case Against The United States
The Philippines, an archipelago of over 7,000 islands in the western Pacific Ocean, had been a Spanish colony for over 300 years by the 1890s. Filipino nationalists led by Emilio Aguinaldo rebelled against Spanish rule beginning in 1896. When the United States declared war against Spain over events in Cuba in 1898, the U.S. Navy moved against Spanish colonies in the Pacific as well. U.S.... Read More »
Excerpt of letter from Nzinga Mbemba to Portuguese King João III
In 1526, the king of the Kongo, Nzinga Mbemba (who by this time had adopted the Christian name of Afonso I) began writing a series of 24 letters to the Portuguese King Joao III appealing for an end to the slave trade. While a trading relationship had been in place between Portugal and Kongo since the 1480s, Afonso was increasingly unhappy that the relationship between both countries had... Read More »
Excerpts from Slave Narratives
Excerpts from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
One of the very first slave narratives, The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797), served as a prototype for the well-known slave autobiographies of the 19th century written by such fugitive slaves as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. First published in 1772, the volume recounts Equiano's kidnapping in Africa at the age of 10 or 11, and how he was subsequently shipped to... Read More »
Execrable Human Traffick, or The Affectionate Slaves
This reproduction of a painting by George Morland (1789) has lurid colors and shows the sale of an enslaved person. The artist suggests that friends or relatives are being separated, as one of the slaves is being physically restrained as the other enslaved individual is being forced into a boat.
Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume XVII: Near East, 1961-1962
Freedom Narratives
