Francisco Paulo de Almeida, first and only Baron of Guaraciaba, was a Brazilian landowner and banker. He distinguished himself by being one of the most financially successful black men in the Empire of Brazil. He owned several plantations and about two hundred slaves on just one of them. He also owned a fortune estimated at seven hundred thousand contos de réis at the time. He was the owner of the Yellow Palace in the city of Petrópolis. Francisco Paulo de Almeida was born on January 10, 1826 and he was the son of António José de Almeida and his first wife, Galdina Alberta do Espírito Santo ..read more

La Mulatresse Solitude (the Mulatto Solitude) is a national hero on the French Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe. Although very little is known about her life, she is remembered as a brave fighter against the reimposition of slavery on her homeland. It is believed that Solitude’s mother became pregnant as a result of a rape by a white sailor while she was being transported on a slave ship from Africa. She was sold into slavery in Guadeloupe. Due to her mixed heritage, Solitude was of pale skin and eyes. Her owner used her as a domestic slave while her mother did field work. Some historians belie ..read more

Samuel Matekane became Prime Minister of Lesotho on October 28, 2022. Ntsokoane Samuel Matekane was born on March 15, 1968 in the remote town of Mantsonyane, Lesotho. His parents were Hoohol and Mantuba Matekane and he was the 7th of 14 children. Matekane attended Bocheletsane primary school in his hometown and, later, Mabathoana High School in Maseru the capital of Lesotho. In 1980 Matekane started a business importing donkeys from South Africa and selling them in Lesotho. A few years later he expanded his business into manufacturing bricks and then mining and selling sand. He further expande ..read more

Emma Harris was a multi-talented African American cultural influencer in Europe, the Russian Empire and later Soviet Union as well as the Middle East.  Harris was born into a poor family in Georgia on October 7, 1871. Her parents were washerwoman Sarah Green and millworker Richard Matthews. Emma also had a brother, Thomas and a sister, Josephine. Emma Green attended Edmund Asa Ware High School, a segregated high school for African Americans in Georgia and later she went to the Negro Mission College in Norfolk, Virginia. By  December 1896, she had moved to Brooklyn, New York where she ..read more

On September 30, 2022, Captain Ibrahim Traore led a military coup in Burkina Faso, overthrowing the government of Paul-Henry Sandaogo Damiba. On October 21, 2022, Traore was sworn in as transitional president and head of state of Burkina Faso. He was also appointed supreme chief of the Burkinabe armed forces. He is the youngest head of state in the world. Ibrahim Traore was born in 1988 in Bondokuy, Burkina Faso. He attended primary school in his hometown and secondary school in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso’s second-largest city. In 2006 he entered the University of Ouagadougou, graduatin ..read more

The Anglo-Zulu War was a conflict between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom from January 11, 1879, to July 4, 1879, in South Africa. The background of the battle began with the British having interest in Zululand. They specifically wanted the Zulu population to provide labor in the diamond fields of South Africa.  They also wanted to create a South African federation in the region that included Zululand, and they wanted to settle Boer land claims in the region that included territory held by the Zulus. Cetshwayo, the Zulu Kingdom king Cetshwayo refused to submit to British control a ..read more

Prudencia Ayala was a writer, social activist, and campaigner for women’s rights in El Salvador. Ayala was the first woman to run for President in El Salvador and Latin America. Ayala was born on April 28, 1885, to Aurelia Ayala and Vicente Chief in the state of Sonsonate, El Salvador. She is of afro-indigenous descent. Her family would move to Santa Ana City, El Salvador, when she was ten years old. Ayala attended Maria Luisa de Cristofine’s elementary school but dropped out after the second grade. Despite never finishing school, Ayala was self-taught, where she learned to sew and worked as a ..read more

Sidi Mubarak Bombay, one of the most extensive travelers in sub-Saharan Africa in the 19th century, was honored for his assistance to British explorers and adventurers. Bombay, of waYao/Bantu ethnicity, was born in the Ruvuma Region of southern Tanzania around 1820. Separated from his parents at age 12 and taken into slavery by Arab slavers, he was eventually transported to Gugurat, India. After spending two decades enslaved in India, the death of his owner freed Bombay and allowed him to return to his African homeland. Bombay enlisted in the army of Sultan of Zanzibar where he met British exp ..read more

National heroine and revered freedom fighter Juana Ramírez, popularly known as “La Avanzadora” (The Advancer), was born January 12, 1790 in Chaguaramal, Monagas State, Venezuela. Her African slave mother, named Guadalupe, was purchased by her putative father, Spanish army general Andrés Rojas. As a child she was given to Doña Teresa Ramírez de Valderrama who bestowed her surname. As a young woman Ramírez worked as a laundress in Maturín, Venezuela but was well aware of the swirl of revolutionary events of her era, most prominent being political upheavals in France, North America, and Haiti. In ..read more

Afro-British micro artist Willard Wigan’s journey to international recognition and financial security began with an unhappy childhood. Born in Wednesfield, England, in June 1957 to Jamaican immigrants, he was afflicted with undiagnosed Asperger’s disorder. Uninformed, impatient teachers reacted to his dyslexia and struggle to read and write by humiliating him in front of classmates who also mocked him. At age five he retreated into his own world, a shed behind a garden where he enjoyed observing the activity of ants. He amazed fellow students with his miniature sculptures–made from wood splint ..read more