The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was a system that targeted Black people from different regions of the African continent and forcibly removed them to other lands.

It drew deeper wedges between long-established communities.

It also had another effect.

The resulting turmoil of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade provided the impetus for the unification of African people as they were dispersed across the world. The Middle Passage was a funnel that consolidated thousands of tribes.

What was the result?

Over time, Africans in small pockets of the diaspora came to recognize a common language, culture, and psychology. 

A fusion of these elements under a tremendous amount of pressure brought forth new alliances, new movements, and new leaders for a new African society. The new African was an African body possessed by a Black conscience.

From their first encounter with the environment of a slave ship, Africans were learning how to navigate a society that stigmatized them. With each law and enforcement of oppression, the new society threatened to outline the limits of their expression, and by extension, their identity.

Against these restrictions from the dominant society, Africans began to develop connections with each other based on similar struggles and shared interests. These scattered connections developed into distinct networks of individuals with their own ideas and aspirations. The Black communities of the Americas were born through these very processes of collective resolve in favor of the status quo or against it.

African rebellions became Black rebellions. In the defense of their freedom, by choosing to act within the framework of the group, they were also defending their right to their newfound identity. They were defending their Blackness.

In this article, we will examine 10 such moments in history when Black people were united against their oppression.

These are just some of the cases in which Black rebels worked together and succeeded in freeing themselves.