Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery and liberate slaves around the world.
Photograph of a slave boy in the Sultanate of Zanzibar. 'An Arab master's punishment for a slight offence.' c. 1890. From at least the 1860s onwards, photography was a powerful weapon in the abolitionist arsenal.
The Chevalier de Saint-Georges, known as the "Black Mozart", was, by his social position, and by his political involvement, a figurehead of free blacks.
Jacques Pierre Brissot (1754–1793), who organized the Society of the Friends of the Blacks in 1788
Proclamation of the Abolition of Slavery in the French Colonies, 27 April 1848, by Biard (1849)
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavement is the placement of a person into slavery, and the person is called a slave or an enslaved person.
Gordon, a slave from Louisiana, in 1863. The scars are the result of a whipping by his overseer.
Flogging a slave fastened to the ground, illustration in an 1853 anti-slavery pamphlet
A poster for a slave auction in Georgia, U.S., 1860
Portrait of an older woman in New Orleans with her enslaved servant girl in the mid-19th century
