In 1526 the King of Kongo wrote a letter to the King of Portugal asking him to stop the slave trade due to the harm it was doing in his country. The opinions and ideas of the Africans thenselves are often overlooked in discussions about slavery.

Letter Translation

In the early 17th century (1625 or 1626) there was a very popular comedy in Spain called "El valiente negro en Flandes" (The brave black man in Flanders) written by Andrés de Claramonte. This comedy tells the story of a slave of the house of Alba, who through his heroism in Flanders gets freed, then promoted to officer, and even to field marshall (maestre de campo).

Everything there seems fairly normal, but the shocking part is that the former slave and now field marshall eventually marries his former master's daughter. That's a phenomenal happy ending that the audience enjoyed to no end in 1625, and it was published with no problems in 1638.

Come the year 1651, and a director asks the judge of the theatres for permission to perform the comedy. The judge gave his permission to perform it, but censoring the marriage part, which was deemed "against policy and public morals".

The judge may have been an asshole.

During the crusades, European crusaders often enslaved Muslims, and the Muslims, likewise, enslaved crusaders. Muslims who happened to live in territory that the crusaders conquered could end up as slaves, but for the most part people were enslaved during raids into enemy land or if they were taken prisoner after a battle.

Slavery probably wasn’t usually a lifelong condition though. There were prisoner exchanges, and charities were established to raise money to ransom prisoners or pay for an enslaved person’s freedom. Since Muslims and Christians lived so close together it was also relatively easy to run away. Usama ibn Munqidh, an ambassador from Damascus who often visited the crusader kingdom in the 12th century, once saw some runaway slaves in the villages outside Acre. Their crusader owner came looking for them but the villagers wouldn’t help him. On other occasions Usama tried to buy any slaves he encountered.

Usama’s family also owned Christian slaves, including a child who remained with the family for many years, grew up there, converted to Islam and married a Muslim woman. But finally the man had an opportunity to escape - he fled back to crusader territory, and returned to Christianity.

The crusaders hadn’t invented the concept of racial slavery yet though - only religion was supposed to determine whether someone could be a slave or not. A Muslim slave who converted to Christianity should, theoretically, no longer be a slave, at least according to the law of the Latin church and the secular laws of the crusaders. In the 13th century, enslaved Muslims figured out a loophole in this law - if they were baptized as Christians, they would have to be set free, but once they were free, they could simply go back to Muslim territory and continue to be Muslims.

At least, this is what the crusaders assumed they were doing, so after awhile they simply refused to baptize any more slaves. That attracted the attention of the church, because as far as the church was concerned a baptism was a baptism and it could never be refused, regardless of what happened afterwards. Eventually the Pope intervened and a compromise was reached: enslaved people would have to be baptized if they asked for it, but the crusaders would no longer have to automatically set them free. The church was happy that people were being baptized, and the secular rulers were happy that they didn’t have to give up their valuable workforce, even though this contradicted both church and secular laws against enslaving Christians. Apparently the compromise wasn’t very effective though, since enslaved Muslims continued to escape, whether they had been baptized or not.

Being enslaved must have been just as terrible and terrifying during the crusades as it is in any other era, but it’s interesting to see how crafty and ingenious both sides could be when trying to escape back to their homes and families.

Sources:

Joshua Prawer, “Social classes in the crusader states: The ‘Minorities’”, in A History of the Crusades, vol. V: The Impact of the Crusades on the Near East, ed. by Kenneth M. Setton, Norman P. Zacour and Harry W. Hazard (University of Wisconsin Press, 1985)

Benjamin Z. Kedar, “The subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant,” in The Crusades: The Essential Readings, ed. Thomas Madden (Blackwell, 2002)

Benjamin Z. Kedar, Crusade and Mission: European Approaches Toward the Muslims (Princeton University Press, 1988)

Usama ibn Munqidh, The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades, trans. Paul M. Cobb (Penguin, 2008)

When I first learned about the MOVE bombing it was pretty shocking, and still haven't seen too much coverage about it. American police dropping bombs on citizens, in 1985. Two 1 lb bombs only, but the fire killed 11 people

Happened before I was born, but looks like race must have been involved in how the cops handled it all

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/8/8/20747198/philadelphia-bombing-1985-move

Just wanted to remind anyone interested that last year the Smithsonian put together a series of free, readily-available presentations on the history of indigenous slavery in the New World called The Other Slavery.

The talks cover a lot of ground, from the heavy hitters in the field discussing the historical background of Native American slavery, to modern communities still grappling with the legacy of pervasive indigenous slavery throughout the New World. They hint there will be further presentations/events, and it seems the next one will focus (almost?) exclusively on the impact of indigenous slavery in California. If you are looking for an easy way to start learning about the Native American slave trade I highly recommend these presentations.

I'm going to repost an answer I wrote here several years ago about the first black player in NHL history, Willie O'Ree.

As the question kind of implies, there are not a lot of black players in hockey. As this somewhat outdated Wikipedia article shows their numbers are limited; roughly 20 players have played in the NHL this year (out of about 1000 in total to appear in one game), and the costs associated with hockey mean it is largely an upper-middle class and (majority) Canadian sport, categories that is predominantly white. So just from that the impact of a black player is not as major as it is in the other three leagues in North America, where blacks have far larger representation. Thus it isn't surprising that O'Ree's impact is a lot less known or discussed than someone like Robinson. But it still matters, and is important.

Baseball is known for its unofficial policy of segregation, which as noted ended when Robinson began playing in 1947. In comparison, the NHL did not, but that was more to the lack of black hockey players (note: there were black players, and a prominent black league based in Nova Scotia at the start of the 1900s; but again, the numbers of players was even more drastic than today). It was also wary of issues that may have occurred, even in Canada. There is a legend that Conn Smythe, the owner/manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, once said in 1938 that he'd offer $10,000 to anyone who could turn Herb Carnegie white. For context, Carnegie was a well-known black player in the Quebec senior league (a step below the NHL at the time) and was at one point even offered a contract by the New York Rangers (he refused due to the low salary; whether that low salary was racially-motivated is not known, considering hockey players were indeed underpaid at the time). But that the possibility of Smythe saying that shows that there was reluctance to sign black players at the time.

Now onto Willie O'Ree. Like Carnegie he played in the Quebec senior league, and is also notable because he is 95% blind in one eye (which should have forced him from the NHL, but he cheated on the exam). In 1958 he was an injury call-up, and played two games for the Boston Bruins. He would not play again in the NHL until 1960-61, when he appeared in 43 more games, but spent the rest of his career playing for California-based teams in the minor professional Western Hockey League, retiring in 1974. All told, O'Ree was in 45 NHL games in his career, and had 4 goals and 10 assists for 14 points.

O'Ree was not that noteworthy for a long time, in part because he didn't have an impact like Robinson did, as in he was frankly not that great in the NHL. As well it would not be until 1974 that the second black player, Mike Marson, appeared in the NHL, and only in 1981 that the first real "star" player, goaltender Grant Fuhr, made his debut.

But in the past decade or so, the NHL has really stepped up its promotion of O'Ree and his role. He has served as their public face for programs that encourage black youth to play hockey, which has seen moderate results. But simply put, because the lack of black hockey players, and the relative obscurity of O'Ree as an NHL player, his story is not widely known.

That said, there is a fairly good book on the history of black hockey players: Breaking the Ice: The Black Experience in Professional Hockey by Cecil Harris (2003) chronicles everything up until 2002, when Jarome Iginla (who's father is Nigerian) broke out and nearly won the league's MVP award, while leading the league in goals and points. It's no an academic work by any means, and is certainly biased, but it covers a subject that is really underwritten about.

I'll also post another old answer that looks at why hockey has been overwhelmingly white throughout history:

Consider that demographically, Canada has been a much more homogeneous country than the US, with a higher percentage of the population being white (that is to say, of European descent). This of course means that proportionally there are fewer black (and other minorities; see below) to play the sport. However it is worth noting that they did play it, even if the numbers were small. As mentioned the Coloured League existed in the Maritime provinces at the turn of the century, which shows that there were enough black players to form a league, albeit a small regionalised one. But even after that there is the fact that the main hockey-playing countries all have small numbers of black and other ethnic minorities. Even the parts of the US that are most into hockey, the Northeast and Minnesota, are some of the whitest parts of the US, so demographically it was always going to be a struggle.

I mentioned that there were other minority groups that played, and do play, hockey. Native players (or First Nations, or for my American readers, Indians, a term we try not to use in Canada) have been around for a while, though discriminatory policies towards the native peoples in Canada precluded a lot of interaction until recently. However the earliest confirmed native player in the NHL is Fred Saskamoose (sic; his name is "Sasakamoose"), who debuted in 1954 for the, appropriately enough, Chicago Black Hawks. Asian players also date from a similar time, with Larry Kwong (of Chinese descent) playing a shift for the New York Rangers in 1948. Players of Indian descent are more recent and rare, and I struggle to think of anyone who predates Robin Bawa from 1989 (indecently from near my hometown).

For some reading material, I'd recommend the following:

Breaking the Ice: The Black Experience in Professional Hockey by Cecil Harris (2004). Harris interviews nearly every black NHL player up to that point, from Willie O'Ree to Jarome Iginla, and looks at what it means to be black in hockey. Its a really in depth look, and Harris does a good job of keeping to the facts.

Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895-1925 by George Robert Fosty (2004). This was effectively self-published, but don't let that stop you from reading it if you can find it. It serves as an excellent chronicle of an obscure part of hockey history.

Hockey: A People's History by Michael McKinley (2006). This is a more pop history, coffee-table style book that accompanies a documentary made in Canada years ago. It doesn't specifically look at minority groups in Canada, but it gives a more overall history and does note non-white players and the struggles they faced. It's more for getting a larger picture of how things were.

Since those posts both O'Ree and Sasakamoose have written memoirs (as did Herb Carnegie, and the first Inuit player, Jordin Tootoo); all four are well-worth reading, especially Sasasakmoose, who attended a Canadian Residential School as a youth, and is quite open about how that impacted his life:

• Willie: The Game-Changing Story of the NHL's First Black Player by Willie O'Ree and Michael McKinley (2020

• A Fly in a Pail of Milk: The Herb Carnegie Story by Herb Carnegie and Bernice Carnegie (2019)

• Call Me Indian: From the Trauma of Residential School to Becoming the NHL's First Treaty Indigenous Player by Fred Sasakamoose (2021)

• All the Way: My Life on Ice by Jordin Tootoo and Stephen Brunt (2015)

Racism and slavery is mostly discussed in the context of the early modern period, particularly colonialism (which makes sense, as those experiences directly impact on our world), but for a pretty fascinating attempt to retroject those processes into the ancient world I would strongly recommend Douglas Boin's Alaric. The comparison is of course not 1:1 (aside from everything else, the late Roman empire used Goths heavily in the military) but it makes a strong case for seeing those processes at play.

Along many other european states, Germany tried to "get it's share of the pie" in african colonies. In the time they occupied "Deutsch-Südwestafrika" (1884-1915) they forced the tribe of the Herero to either die by being shot or getting sent into the desert cut off from water supplies to die from thirst.

This was a reaction to the uprising led by Samuel Maharero, an uprising fueled by the fear of not being able to survive in the harsh conditions that the germans had the indigenous people live in. They attacked german institutions and the german troops already stationed in Deutsch-Südwestafrika were quickly overwhelmed. The Reichsleitung sent reinforcements that pushed the Herero back into the Omaheke-Desert, around which the germans erected a line of outposts that shot anyone trying to leave the desert on sight.