Definitions

Henry Box Brown (l. c. 1815-1897) was an enslaved African American who became famous as "the man who mailed himself to freedom" after he had himself shipped in a box from Richmond, Virginia, to abolitionists in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...

Sojourner Truth (l. c. 1797-1883) was an African American abolitionist, women's suffrage advocate, and civil rights activist who famously "walked away" from slavery in 1826, sued in court for the return of her son and, between 1843 and her...

Harriet Jacobs (l. c. 1813-1897) was a former slave, abolitionist, and author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), her autobiography, describing her life as a slave in North Carolina, her flight to freedom in the North, and her...

Titus Andronicus is the earliest tragedy by William Shakespeare (l. c.1564-1616), probably written sometime between 1589 and 1593, and first performed in 1594. Infamous for its gratuitous violence and two-dimensional characters, Titus Andronicus...

Phillis Wheatley (l. c. 1753-1784) was the first African American woman to publish a book of poetry and become recognized as a poet, overcoming the prevailing understanding of the time that a Black person was incapable of writing, much less...

Lebensraum ('living space'), is a geopolitical concept which was adopted by Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the leader of Nazi Germany, to justify the military domination of Central and Eastern Europe, and then the USSR. Hitler promised that Lebensraum...

Mary Prince (l. c. 1788 to c. 1833) was the first enslaved Black woman to publish an autobiography/slave narrative. Prince was illiterate but dictated her life story to the writer Susanna Strickland (l. 1803-1885), published in 1831 as The...

The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare (c. 1564-1616), written in 1610 or 1611, and first performed for the court of James I of England (r. 1603-1625) on 2 November 1611. Believed to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote on his own...

The Oradour-sur-Glane massacre in southwest France was the murder on 10 June 1944 of 643 civilian men, women, and children by the Waffen SS during the Second World War (1939-45). The massacre and the razing to the ground of the village was...

Twelfth Night, or What You Will is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare (l. c. 1564-1616), written between 1600 and 1601 and first performed on 2 February 1602. As suggested by the title's allusion to Twelfth Night – the night before...