A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr
(b. 25 February 1928; d. 14 December 1998),legal scholar, author, historian, civil rights advocate, and prominent federal judge. Brought up in humble circumstances in Trenton, New Jersey, Aloysius ...
A. Philip Randolph
(1889–1979), union head and civil rights leader.A socialist, Asa Philip Randolph saw economic empowerment as the key to African-American advancement, a philosophy he espoused in his Messenger ...
Aaron Henry
(b. 2 July 1922; d. 19 May 1997),civil rights activist and politician. Born in Dublin, Mississippi, to sharecroppers who encouraged him to get an education, Aaron Henry joined the ...
Aaron McGruder
Since its creation by Aaron McGruder (b. 29 May 1974), The Boondocks has filled mailbags of newspaper editors across the country with congratulatory and condemning letters. Taking on racial injustice ...
Abby Kelley Foster
(b. 15 January 1810; d. 14 January 1887), reformer, abolitionist, lecturer, and women's rights activist.Abby Kelley was born in Pelham, Massachusetts, to parents of Irish-Quaker descent. She ...
abdication Crisis
The constitutional crisis, resulting from the king of England's determination to marry a divorced woman, Wallis Simpson, which culminated in the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936.
Abdul Rahaman
(b. c. 1762; d. 6 July 1829),perhaps the most well-known African in America in the 1820s. Ibrahima Abdul Rahaman was born in Timbo, Futa Jallon, Guinea, to King Suri ...
Abercorn
The family's Irish history began when James Hamilton of Linlithgow (d. 1618), created ist earl of Abercorn in the Scottish peerage in 1606, was granted lands in Co. Tyrone. His ...
Aberdeen, cathedrals
St Machar's cathedral, built on the site of a church founded by one of St Columba's disciples (c.580), was rebuilt in granite after destruction by Edward III in 1336. Alternately under presbyterian ...
Aberfan disaster
On 21 October 1966 an avalanche of sludge from a coal tip buried the primary school of this south Wales village, causing the loss of 144 lives, mostly young children. The subsequent inquiry blamed ...
abolitionism
A term associated with protest on grounds of inhumanity and a call for the abolition of slavery (see, for example, the arguments of William Wilberforce, 1759–1833). More recently extended to the ...
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission
Have emerged from the indigenous adaptation to colonisation and from efforts to govern indigenous Australians more effectively and equitably.Though there were episodes of collective action by ...
Aboriginal art
The history of indigenous aesthetic production in what is now Canada is culturally and geographically diverse, dating back several thousand years. Discussion of the topic is complex and presents ...
Aboriginal art
Is among the oldest in the world. Work produced today is quite similar to that produced over 20 000 years ago as bark paintings, rock paintings and engravings, and body painting. ...
Aboriginal cultural ownership
Attributes custodianship to present-day Aborigines of the sacred objects, lands, and knowledge of their heritage. This rationale underpins sacred site and native title legislation, but has been more ...
Aboriginal enfranchisement
For Aboriginal people, enfranchisement, first legislated under the Province of Canada's Gradual Civilization Act (1857), meant more than the right to vote. As applied to male status Indians, it ...
Aboriginal games
For Canada's First Nations peoples, sport and gaming traditions reflected the requirements of a hunting and gathering society. Various competitions such as foot and horse racing, spear throwing, and ...
Aboriginal history
Refers to the history of indigenous (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) peoples in Australia, and is frequently used as a shorthand for one aspect of that history, their interactions with ...
Aboriginal land claims, northern Canada
Land claims are claims that Native peoples press upon the government of Canada on the basis of their Aboriginal rights in territories they have historically occupied. The history of these ...
Aboriginal land rights
Traditionally arose for men and women both from inheritance and from fulfilment of their particular obligations. Land was the structuring principle of much remembered cultural knowledge, allowing the ...
