11Roman slaves
Roman slaves wore collars of iron with messages like a modern dog collar, for example, this one, which reads "I have run away; hold me. When you shall have returned me to my master, Zoninus, you will receive a solidus."
12Squanto
Before the Mayflower, Squanto was kidnapped, sold into slavery in Spain, and escaped back to North America, only to find his entire tribe wiped out from disease. The site he later helped the Pilgrams settle at was the summer village of his tribe, Plymoth Rock.
13William Lee
William “Billy” Lee was George Washington’s slave and personal valet. He fought alongside Washington through the entire American Revolutionary War and was the only slave of Washington's who was emancipated immediately upon his death.
14Quilombo Dos Palmares
Quilombo Dos Palmares was a community of fugitive slaves in Brazil that resisted Portuguese efforts to destroy it for almost a century. One estimate places the population of Palmares in the 1690s at around 20,000 inhabitants.
15Bill Richmond
Bill Richmond was a black slave who fought alongside the British during the Revolutionary War. He later moved to England where he became one of the world's most famous bare-knuckle boxers. An articulate, respected man, he married a white woman and attended George IV’s coronation.
16Henry Brown
Henry "Box" Brown successfully escaped slavery in 1849 by mailing himself in a wood crate from Virginia to the free state of Pennsylvania.
17Samuel McCulloch
Samuel McCulloch, a freed slave, was the first Texian soldier to be wounded during the Texas Revolution, in 1835. A law later prohibited freed slaves from residing in the Republic of Texas but specifically excluded McCulloch, his family, and his descendants in recognition of his service.
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18Pregnant slaves
Female slaves in the American South would chew on the cotton root to abort a pregnancy, decreasing the reproduction of more slave children.
19Elizabeth Freeman
In 1780, a slave named Elizabeth Freeman essentially ended slavery in Massachusetts by suing for her freedom on the basis that the new state constitution declared that all men are born free and equal.
20Abram Gannibal
Abram Gannibal was a black African-born Russian nobleman of the 18th century. Sold into slavery, he was eventually freed by Peter the Great and adopted into the Emperor's household as his godson. His great-great-grandson is the celebrated author and poet Alexander Pushkin.
