Learn about enslavement, resistance, abolition and the struggle for freedom through biographies and historical records.
8,921 matching cards · 24 cards per page
Biography
Mary Bateman Clark (1795–1840) was an American woman, born into slavery, who was taken to Indiana Territory. She was forced to become an indentured servant, even though the Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery. She was sold in 1816, the same year that…
Loading image…1878–1955
Mary Cordelia Montgomery Booze (née Mary Cordelia Montgomery; March 1878 – May 17, 1955) was an American political organizer, teacher, businessperson, and activist. The daughter of former slaves, she was one of the first African-American women to sit on…
Born 1820
Mary Elizabeth (née Miles) Bibb (1820–1877 or the early 1880s) was an American-born educator and abolitionist leader. She is considered by some to be the first female Black journalist in Canada. She was a teacher and abolitionist in the United States,…
Loading image…Biography
Mary Ellen Pleasant (August 19, 1814 – January 11, 1904) was an American entrepreneur, financier, real estate magnate and abolitionist. She was arguably the first self-made millionaire of African-American heritage, preceding Madam C. J. Walker by decades.…
Dates not recorded
Mary Frances Vashon (c. 1818 – September 1854) also known as Mary Frances Colder, and by her pen name Fanny Homewood, was an African American journalist and an abolitionist in the 19th century. She was one of the first African American female journalists…
1845–1890
Mary Garnet Barboza (1845 – 1890) was an African-American school founder and campaigner for women's education in Liberia. She was born Mary Garnet on February 11, 1845, in Troy, New York, the only surviving child of abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet and…
Biography
Mary Green (ca 1840s – 1912) was the first African-American settler to the Arizona Territory. A formerly enslaved woman from the American south, she later became the first black pioneer to own land in Tempe, Arizona and the mother of the first…
Loading image…1841–1925
Mary Jane Holmes Shipley Drake was an American slave involved in the Holmes v. Ford case, from which she gained her freedom in 1853.
Loading image…1819–1909
Mary Jane Richardson Jones (c. 1819 – December 26, 1909) was an American abolitionist, philanthropist, and suffragist. Born in Tennessee to parents who were free African-Americans, Jones and her family moved to Illinois. With her husband, John, she was a…
1854–1952
Mary Keys Gibson (also Gipson, 1854–1952) was an American nurse. Gibson, a former enslaved person, worked as a midwife for many years and later earned her degree in nursing in 1907 at age 53. Gibson was the first African American to earn an accredited…
1843–1899
Mary Laurinda Jane Smith Beatty (February 1834 – September 28, 1899) was an African-American abolitionist and suffrage advocate who joined Abigail Scott Duniway, Maria P. Hendee, and Mary Ann King Lambert in 1872 to cast ballots in Portland, Oregon when…
1846–1919
Mary Magdalen Healy, CND (born Eliza Healy; December 23, 1846 – September 13, 1919) was an American Catholic religious sister who served in the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal. Healy was born into the notable Healy family of Macon, Georgia; her…
Loading image…Biography
Mary Mildred Williams (born Botts, c. 1847 – 1921) was born into slavery in Virginia and became widely known as an example of a "white slave" in the years before the Civil War. In 1855, her escaped father bought his family's freedom with financial aid from…
c. 1788–after 1833
Prince’s testimony exposed the violence of Caribbean slavery and strengthened Britain’s abolition campaign.
Loading image…1823–1862
Mary Smith Peake, born Mary Smith Kelsey (1823 – February 22, 1862), was an American teacher, humanitarian and a member of the black elite in Hampton, best known for starting a school for the children of former slaves starting in the fall of 1861 under…
Biography
Mary Sampson Patterson Leary Langston (born Mary Sampson Patterson; c. 1835 – 1915) was an American abolitionist, the first African-American woman to attend Oberlin College, and wife of notable abolitionists Lewis Sheridan Leary and Charles Henry Langston.…
Biography
Mary Simpson (c.1752-1758, in Virginia – March 18, 1836 in New York, New York) was an African-American woman who claimed to be a former slave of George Washington. She is credited with originating the tradition of celebrating Washington's Birthday in New…
1709–1743
Mathieu Léveillé (1709 – September 9, 1743) was an executioner in New France, who was an enslaved person of African descent. For 24 years, had been enslaved and forced to work on a plantation in Martinique. According to some accounts, he repeatedly tried…
Biography
Matilda McCrear (c. 1857 – January 13, 1940), born Àbáké, was the last known survivor in the United States of the transatlantic slave trade and the ship Clotilda. She was a Yoruba who was captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama at the age of two with her…
1871-1876; printed later
FROM THE SOURCE CATALOGMatte collodion photograph of Harriet Tubman standing in an interior room setting. The full-length portrait shows Tubman facing the photographer in the middle of the frame with her hands resting on the back of an upholstered chair. Tubman wears a dark…
1860s
FROM THE SOURCE CATALOG2014.20.1a: A matted tintype of Bachus, an enslaved man. The image is a studio portrait that features Bachus wearing a top hat, coat, waistcoat, pants, and boots. He holds a cane in his right hand and rests his left hand on a prop fence. 2014.20.1b: The…
1840–1900
Matthew Gaines (August 4, 1840 – June 11, 1900) was a former slave, community leader, minister, and Republican Texas state senator during the Reconstruction era. As one of the first two African American state senators ever elected in Texas alongside George…
1816–
Matthew T. Newsom, sometimes spelled Newsome, was an American justice of the peace and state legislator in Mississippi during the Reconstruction era. He represented Claiborne County at the 1868 Mississippi Constitutional Convention and from 1870 to 1871 in…
1847–1910
Mattie Jane Jackson (January 1847–February 5, 1910) was an African American author. She is known for her 1866 autobiography and slave narrative The Story of Mattie J. Jackson: Her Parentage, Experience of Eighteen Years in Slavery, Incidents During the…
Biographies, museum objects and archive records are distinct card types. Every card links to its historical source.
