West African History

At a fort in Cabo Vermelho in 1779, Sisi, a West African girl with a gift for languages, works as a translator for her English enslavers. She was separated from her younger brother after they were kidnapped from their village by the ahosi, fierce female warriors who serve a neighboring king—and her guilt over her failure to protect him has never left her. When unexpected news reaches the fort, Sisi must find her voice, for her brother’s sake and for her own.

In the 1800's, the old American West was a desirable destination for emancipated or escaped slaves. After the Civil War, many Blacks believed the West offered more opportunity, and less discrimination. In this short, 45 minute eBook, you will read 11 stories of Blacks who discovered the West was a place for them to not only survive, but thrive. You may have heard of some, such as Bessie Coleman, (cover photo) the first African American to earn a pilots license. Or, Justina Ford, a doctor in Denver, Colorado. Many are recently discovered gems, such as lawyer John Dennis Posten, who had a ...

King Peggy chronicles the astonishing journey of an American secretary who suddenly finds herself king to a town of 7,000 souls on Ghana's central coast, half a world away. Upon arriving for her crowning ceremony in beautiful Otuam, she discovers the dire reality: there's no running water, no doctor, and no high school, and many of the village elders are stealing the town's funds. To make matters worse, her uncle (the late king) sits in a morgue awaiting a proper funeral in the royal palace, which is in ruins.

From about the ninth to fifth centuries BCE, the population of Greece grew unprecedentedly large, expanding from about 800,000 people to as many as 13 million. About a quarter million of these lived in Athens. The average size of urban households during this period grew considerably, a fact that suggests that food was suddenly available in excesses sufficient to keep larger families healthy and alive much more effectively than just a millennium earlier. Bigger families meant bigger armies and larger communities that would eventually grow into the metropolises of Classical Greece.

What if the richest man in history didn’t hoard his fortune—but gave it away? In the 14th century, a West African emperor named Mansa Musa shook the world with a single journey. His legendary pilgrimage to Mecca, accompanied by tens of thousands and rivers of gold, turned the Mali Empire into a symbol of wealth and wonder. But Mansa Musa was more than a man of riches—he was a visionary who believed that true power comes from faith, knowledge, and generosity.

Paul Jennings was born into slavery on the plantation of James and Dolley Madison in Virginia, later becoming part of the Madison household staff at the White House. Once finally emancipated by Senator Daniel Webster later in life, he would give an aged and impoverished Dolley Madison, his former owner, money from his own pocket, write the first White House memoir, and see his sons fight with the Union Army in the Civil War.

Whilst it’s impossible to capture the essence of Nigeria in one story, its writers have given listeners the opportunity to experience the many different parts that make up Africa’s most populous nation. In Of This Our Country, acclaimed and award-winning Nigerian writers go a step further and describe their Nigeria, sharing personal essays about a country that holds so much more than any one perspective could. Through the words of these writers, a living portrait of Nigeria is woven, one that is as beautiful as it is complex.

German South West Africa: The History and Legacy of Germany’s Biggest African Colony chronicles the politics and conflicts that marked Germany’s efforts to colonize German South West Africa. You will learn about German South West Africa like never before.

Known in the Dominican Republic and Togo as Vodu, in Benin as Vodún, and in Haiti as Vodou, West African religion has, for hundreds of years, served as a repository of sacred knowledge while simultaneously evolving in response to human experience and globalization. Spirit Service: Vodún and Vodou in the African Atlantic World explores this dynamic religion, its mobility, and its place in the modern world.

On the 12th of October 1492, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas, and enslaved the native population. This was the start of the greatest crimes against humanity. For 400 years, 12 million men, women and children were sold and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean; this was known as the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

When Ghana declared independence from Britain in 1957, it immediately became a target for opportunists determined to lay hold of whatever assets colonialism hadn’t already stripped. The military ousted the new nation’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, then falsely accused him of stealing the country’s gold and hiding it overseas. Into this story stepped one of history’s most charismatic scammers, John Ackah Blay-Miezah – a con man to rival the trickster god Anansi. Born into poverty, Blay-Miezah declared himself the custodian of an alleged Nkrumah trust fund worth billions.

Bass Reeves was a man who forged his own destiny and wrote his own life story as he went along. Born into slavery, Reeves rose above all challenges to become one of the most legendary lawmen of the American West. As a deputy US marshal, he held himself to a personal code of conduct that went beyond the badge he wore. For Bass, the line between right and wrong was clear, and he never hesitated to enforce the law—even when it meant pursuing his own friends or family. Justice wasn’t just his duty; it was his calling.

Author Susan E. Lindsey illuminates the trials and triumphs of building a new life in Liberia, where settlers were free, but struggled to acclimate themselves to an unfamiliar land, coexist with indigenous groups, and overcome disease and other dangers. Liberty Brought Us Here: The True Story of American Slaves Who Migrated to Liberia explores the motives and attitudes of colonization supporters and those who lived in the colony, offering perspectives beyond the standard narrative that colonization was driven solely by racism or forced exile.

Joseph Laroche was an anomaly among the passengers of the Titanic. He was exceptionally well-educated in a time when few Black men had access to an education - and when even fewer were able to travel on a luxurious ship in first or second class. When his family arrived in the United States without him after the Titanic's tragic crash, they were received well along with the other survivors and even sponsored by a wealthy New York heiress. Who was Joseph Laroche? Where was he going, and what was his story? This biography recounts the life of Joseph Laroche.

Enslaved West Indian women had few opportunities to record their stories for posterity. Yet from their dusty footprints and the umpteen small clues they left for us to unravel, there's no question that they earned their place in history. Pick any Caribbean island and you'll find race, skin color, and rank interacting with gender in a unique and often volatile way. In A Kick in the Belly, Stella Dadzie follows the evidence and finds women played a distinctly female role in the development of a culture of slave resistance - a role that was not just central, but downright dynamic.

When we hear of Jamaica or the Caribbean, we think of beautiful islands of paradise with sun, sea and sand, reggae music, cannabis, and "irie" people like Usain Bolt - people who are living out their best dreams, desires, and lives. But this book analyzes this motif, given the historical and current economic and political situation in Jamaica, the Caribbean, and the "Global South". In an attempt to escape the adverse realities of poverty, inequality, and injustice, the people of the Global South find themselves in north metropolises with very little agency.

The Dirty Dozen meets Band of Brothers in this true story of how a rusty old New Orleans banana boat staffed with an unlikely crew of international merchant seamen, a gang of inmates from a local jail, and a French harbor pilot spirited out of Morocco by O.S.S. agents in the trunk of a Chevy, were drafted into service in WWII - and heroically succeeded in setting the stage for Patton's epic invasion of North Africa.

If forgiveness is possible after genocide, then perhaps there is hope for the comparably smaller rifts that plague our relationships, our communities, and our nation. As We Forgive explores the pain, the mystery, and the hope through seven compelling stories of those who have made this journey toward reconciliation.

To Westerners, the name Timbuktu long conjured a tantalizing paradise, an African El Dorado where even the slaves wore gold. Beginning in the late 18th century, a series of explorers gripped by the fever for "discovery" tried repeatedly to reach the fabled city. But one expedition after another went disastrously awry, succumbing to attack, the climate, and disease. Timbuktu was rich in another way, too. A medieval center of learning, it was home to tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts.

Two tales of a city: the historical race to reach one of the world's most mythologized places and the story of how a contemporary band of archivists and librarians, fighting to save its ancient manuscripts from destruction at the hands of al-Qaeda, added another layer to the legend.